


echo the words to me

by wolfhalls



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Sex, First Time, Getting Together, M/M, Oral Sex, Self-Esteem Issues, aka my personal fuck you to berman and braga, the works!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:15:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25771942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolfhalls/pseuds/wolfhalls
Summary: It's Malcolm's birthday. He doesn’t know that Trip knows of course, and that hurts. To not even bring it up with the people that you have been serving with for months. To think that they wouldn’t care. Well, Trip does care. In a sudden, dizzying flash of clarity, his caring takes shape. It gains purpose and traction. He watches Malcolm at work, and takes a deep breath.Right now though, there is much to be done. He stands next to Malcolm, shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip, and presses his fingers to the controls.Later on, he watches as Malcolm Reed cuts into a birthday cake and laughs. He watches as he licks icing from his thumb. He wonders.(or: falling in love during his first deep space mission wasn't part of the plan. Trip does it anyway.)
Relationships: Malcolm Reed/Charles "Trip" Tucker III
Comments: 40
Kudos: 131





	echo the words to me

**Author's Note:**

> hello! i started this fic last year when watching enterprise for the first time, and it's been a bit of a labour of love since then. but! it's done now. i wanted to talk about what happened after trip got, uh, pregnant. lmao. it would probably do a bit of a number on you mentally, right? anyway here's my attempt at writing that. 
> 
> set between 'silent enemy' and 'minefield'. so that's the latter half of season 1, through to the third episode of season 2. 
> 
> okay, that's it! i am incredibly nervous posting this, so i'm off to have a large gin and tonic now. live long and prosper kiddos.

Their ship is falling apart, and all Trip can think is, _oh God, not again._ His mom always told him that he fell for people too easily, and right now, he can’t argue with that. Not when he’s seeing – really, genuinely seeing – Malcolm for the first time. Not the stiff-upper lipped Malcolm, reserved to the point that he is a stranger to everyone on this ship. Not the Malcolm that moves and acts with so little regard for himself.

No, this one is different.

This one is tired and vulnerable, running on nothing but gritted teeth. The sleeves of his uniform are rolled up, his hair is damp with sweat, and damn it all to hell, it’s his birthday. He doesn’t know that Trip knows of course, and that hurts. To not even bring it up with the people that you have been serving with for months. To think that they wouldn’t care. Well, Trip does care. In a sudden, dizzying flash of clarity, his caring takes shape. It gains purpose and traction. He watches Malcolm at work, and takes a deep breath.

Right now though, there is much to be done. He stands next to Malcolm, shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip, and presses his fingers to the controls.

Later on, he watches as Malcolm Reed cuts into a birthday cake and laughs. He watches as he licks icing from his thumb. He wonders.

-

They had met a few months before they launched, in a little bar just a few blocks away from the academy. Trip had reached out to everyone he would be likely to be working with, invited them all to share a few beers, to get to know each other and break the ice. When he’d got there, only five or so minutes late, there was already a figure waiting at the bar. Slight, with a ramrod posture. He’d turned around and caught Trip’s eye, and-

(Trip had read Malcolm’s file already, of course. 33 years old, extremely English, proficient, dependable, never skipped a lecture at the Academy. No one he had shared a class with seemed to have any idea what he was like other than unerringly punctual. His own roommate had only said that Malcolm ‘always tidied up after himself.’ Which was, you know, reassuring from a professional standpoint. You don’t want a messy armory officer, after all. Otherwise though? Well, Trip was a little worried. He was going to have to spend five years working with this guy, barring any disasters.

“I don’t think he has a personality,” he’d said to Jon. “I think he might have just been cooked up in one of those new replicators.”

“Well, you don’t have to be friends with him,” Jon said. “You just have to work with him.”)

\- “Malcolm,” Trip had said, holding out a hand. “It’s great to meet you at last.”

Malcolm’s grip was strong, and he didn’t break Trip’s gaze for a second. “Commander,” he began. “I can’t tell you ho-”

“Hey,” Trip said. “Enough with the formalities. We’re not on duty yet.”

Malcolm had frowned ever so slightly – and yeah, Trip was always gonna remember that. “Charles,” he said, sounding like he’d rather be exposed to the vacuum of space than call a superior officer by their first name. Trip didn’t let go of his hand, and started to laugh.

“Honestly, just call me Trip. Everyone does. Well, apart from my mom when she’s mad at me, which is a lot more often than you’d think.”

Malcolm had just looked at him, unbridled curiosity plain to see. Right there, in a dingy little dive, Trip knew that they’d be fine. That somewhere underneath all of that formality, there was someone that Trip could be friends with. Didn’t matter how long it took. They’d get there.

-

Really, Trip should have known then.

-

Trip’s used to riding out a crush. He’s seen plenty of them through. Simon who worked at the speeder repair shop, Katie who sat next to him in homeroom for a year, Jason the bartender, and on and on and so on. Trip loves being in love, loves that helpless rush of adoration, and so he’s always gone along with it. Some of those infatuations have borne fruit, while most have ebbed and waned.

This though, feels different. He spends a lot of time with Malcolm. Sometimes days alongside him. This has been enough for Trip to not only notice and catalog Malcolm’s faults, but to declare them irrelevant. He tries to reason with himself. Perhaps if Natalie hadn’t just finished with him, he wouldn’t be so desperate. Perhaps if they weren’t periodically threatened with death and disaster Trip would be able to just, well, calm the fuck down. None of these attempts at rationality hold fast. He sees Malcolm sitting at his station and it all goes to hell again.

He suspects that Malcolm doesn’t feel the same way. Not that he ever gives much away, model officer that he is. Sure, they share their lunches together and Malcolm will stop by Engineering when things are quiet in the armory – but he’s always holding something back.

“We all know that Malcolm isn’t here to fool around with anyone,” Travis says one day. The conversation has slowly been meandering around to this point, ever since Malcolm made a quick exit when Trip and Travis turned up to work out.

“How,” Trip says, “do we know that? Exactly?” He bounces a basketball up and down, and then it’s careering off in the other direction. Travis grabs it without so much as blinking.

“Well, you only need to look at him. Could you _see_ him even loosening up enough to even think about it?”

Trip has been thinking about it, but that’s no particular consolation. Illogical, as T’Pol would put it. “You’re right,” he says.

“Always am,” Travis says. “Anyway. I grew up on a spaceship. You thought break ups were messy back on Earth? Ten times worse when you’re stuck on a ship together. Malcolm’s probably got the right idea.”

“Hmm.”

-

The weeks pass. Hoshi comes down with Telaxian flu just before Christmas, and manages to give it to almost every member of the senior staff. Malcolm runs himself ragged in the armory, coughing and sneezing until Phlox threatens to take him off duty. Trip’s one to talk though, because Phlox does exactly the same thing to him three hours later.

“It’s only a cold,” Malcolm says. He grips the edge of the biobed, shivering. “I’m fine.”

“I wasn’t aware that you’d studied medicine, Lieutenant,” Phlox says. “Perhaps you’d like to take over my job?”

Malcolm glares at him, and wipes the sweat from his forehead on his sleeve. “Fine,” he says. “It’s not just a cold. Don’t you have something to get rid of it?”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to wait this one out, Lieutenant. The same goes for you, Commander.” He tilts Trip’s head to the side and presses the hypospray to his neck. A sharp sting, a hiss. “There. That should help bring your temperature down.”

He does the same to Malcolm, followed by another hypospray. Trip frowns. “Hey,” he says. “Can’t I have some of what he’s having?”

“Unless you need supplemental iron, no. Now, back to your quarters. If you so much as _think_ about turning up for your shift tomorrow-”

“Got it Doc,” Trip says. He waits for Malcolm to right himself, lets him grumble at Phlox for a few minutes more, and then the walk back to their quarters begins. “Some Christmas,” he says to Malcolm. “This time last year, I was at home. Eating the best food in the world, catching some sun. God. I miss that.”

“Sounds lovely,” Malcolm says.

“What were you up to?” Trip says. “Were you back home in England?”

“No,” Malcolm says. “I was in San Francisco, Madeline – my sister – was in Melbourne, and I’m not quite sure where my parents were. Hanoi, maybe.”

Trip doesn’t really know what to say to that. He knew that Malcolm wasn’t particularly close to his parents, Jon had told him that much. To hear it out loud though – it’s a little sad. “Well,” he says. “No one’s going anywhere fast this year. So we’ll all be together. The ones celebrating, that is.”

“Together,” Malcolm says, like he’s trying on the word for size.

Something in Trip aches at it.

“Together,” Trip says. He flings an arm around Malcolm’s shoulders, and promptly starts coughing. “First though,” he says when he catches his breath, “I’m gonna get some sleep. We’ve got three days. I reckon I can get a solid 48 hours in.”

“I really should get back to th-”

“No arguments. Don’t make me pull rank.”

Malcolm looks down at the floor, and Trip swears that he can see a smile on his face. A tiny, tiny one – but a smile nonetheless. “I wouldn’t dream of it, sir,” he says.

-

“I’m sorry,” Malcolm says, “but have I just stepped through the looking glass?”

“It’s called a party Malcolm. What? You never let loose at the Academy?” says Travis. “Come on. You gonna come in or what?”

“Don’t listen to him,” Trip says. He pats Travis on the back. “He’s just a bit over excited. Baby’s first space mission and all.”

“Excuse me,” Travis says. “I was _born_ on a spaceship.”

This was meant to be their New Year’s party – but a warp plasma leak and the tiny diplomatic incident with the Pryxish had pushed their celebrations back a few weeks. It’s all escalated a bit, since Jon left a couple of hours ago. It was supposed to be a few drinks, but then Elizabeth had turned up with a bottle of grog that almost certainly belonged to Phlox, and well. It had all gone a little sideways after that.

Malcolm looks from Trip to Travis, and then back again. Finally, he sighs and steps into the room. Travis lets out a low whistle. “Alright,” he says. “Now things really are getting interesting.”

“I have a feeling I’m going to regret this,” Malcolm says.

“It’s alright,” says Trip, leaning over so that they’re close enough for whispering. He nudges Malcolm, the alcohol making him bolder. “Keep your shirt on, Lieutenant.” Malcolm smiles at that, and Trip feels him relax minutely.

The music is awful – someone keeps playing that awful Tlibrian pop song. Trip’s heard enough of his junior officers humming it this week to be done with it for a lifetime, “I wish they’d play something else. I mean, say what you like about the Klingons,” he says to Malcolm, “but they do have some pretty good tunes in their pockets.” Malcolm looks like he’d rather take a long walk out of a short airlock than listen to Oklugh Mak’s back catalog, and only hums in response. Trip gets him a drink – nothing from Phlox’s liquor cabinet, just a beer. Malcolm spends the next ten minutes nursing it in silence, politely tapping his feet in time to the music. “Hey,” Trip says, nudging him again. “You are allowed to loosen up you know.”

“Sorry,” Malcolm says. He looks at his beer bottle like it’s going to explode in his hand, and then takes a long gulp. A long, long one.

“Whoa, party guy,” Trip says. “Easy. We’ve got all night.”

Malcolm does loosen up after that, bit by incremental bit. He lets Hoshi haul him up for a dance – and God, he’s a terrible dancer – maybe the worst Trip has seen. Trip laughs the whole time, and Malcolm catches his eye from across the room. He smiles back, and spins Hoshi under his arm, bungling the move halfway.

Eventually, people start to make their excuses. Early shifts, a killjoy roommate. After a while, it’s just the bridge crew left, plus Elizabeth and a few other willing crewman. “It is getting a little late,” Hoshi says.

Travis ignores her, and takes a swig from the bottle – Phlox’s bottled hell, to be precise. He winces, baring his teeth as he passes it over to Trip. “Now, I don’t know about you,” he begins without preamble, “but space travel has been doing wonders for my love life.”

“Bloody hell,” says Malcolm. “What is this? ‘ _Shaggers Anonymous?’”_

Something about Malcolm’s accent, the almost but not quite cussing, sends Trip into mild hysterics. He grabs the bottle and takes a swig in an attempt to stifle his laughter. The drink is foul, but it sure does the job. “Male posturing,” he says. “These youngsters. They just can’t help themselves.”

“Hey,” Hoshi says. “I object.” She takes the bottle from Trip – and manages to get more down than anyone else has managed so far. Elizabeth lets out a low whistle. “Besides,” she says. “It’s not like Travis has much to tell anyway. I actually went on a date last week.”

“Where?” says Trip, incredulous. “We live in a giant tin can.”

“I don’t kiss and tell,” Hoshi says. “Besides, it’s hard enough to find a quiet spot on the ship as it is.”

“I,” Travis says, “had a _very_ pleasant evening with Crewman Tyler last week. She didn’t say anything the next day, but I know she was pretty impressed.”

“Really?” Hoshi says. “That’s not what she told me.”

Even Malcolm laughs then, and Trip steals a glance. Like this he looks so much younger, all his typical severity replaced in an instant by the clear brightness of his smile. It’s lovely – and Trip is drunk. Well on the way to being very drunk, in fact.

“So,” Travis says. “Malcolm. Seen any action?”

Trip drags his gaze away – and Hoshi is looking straight at him. She raises an eyebrow, and Trip feels himself flush from his cheeks to his collarbone. Busted. He’s so preoccupied, he misses Malcolm’s response.

“Damn,” Travis says. “I thought girls would go mad for that accent of yours. Hell, aliens too.”

“What?” Hoshi says. “T’Pol and Phlox?”

“I will pay you to stop talking,” Malcolm says – and that sets Trip off laughing again. This, of course, catches Travis’s attention.

“What about you?”

“Uh-uh,” says Trip. “Not going there. Between getting shot at, almost blown up, trying to break Warp 5-”

“- getting knocked up,” supplies Travis.

“Thanks for reminding me,” says Trip, and he does have to push down the surge of irritation that wells up in him then. A breath in, and out. There. “You see? I just haven’t had the time.”

“So no one on the ship?”

“No one,” Trip says. Then, because he’s an idiot: “Not recently.”

“Oh boy,” says Hoshi.

“Oh yes,” says Travis.

“Oh God,” says Malcolm.

“Who?” says Travis. “Is it-” and his eyes swivel in Malcolm’s direction.

“No!” Trip and Malcolm say in unison.

“Phlox,” says Elizabeth.

“No,” says Trip. “No offense,” he adds. “Great guy.” Elizabeth shrugs, and goes back to resting her head on Hoshi’s shoulder.

“T’Pol,” Travis says.

“Trip _wishes,_ ” says Hoshi. “Besides,” she says. “I’ve cracked it.” She reaches for the bottle, and takes a long, measured gulp. “It’s the captain,” she says as she puts it down.

“Hah!” says Travis. “Could you imagine?” Even Malcolm is rolling his eyes, unwilling to even give such a suggestion currency. Then Trip’s silence stretches on just a little bit too long, and Travis’s grin turns rictus. “Fuck,” he says. “Oh my-”

“It was years ago!” Trip says. “I’d like to clarify that.” He can feel Malcolm looking at him, but now Trip can’t quite bring himself to return his gaze. “I really shouldn’t have said anything, actually.”

“Oh don’t worry,” says Elizabeth. “I have the feeling no one’s going to remember too much in the morning. Apart from Malcolm here. He hasn’t drunk half as much as the rest of us.”

Trip does look at Malcolm then. He looks uncomfortable, like he would rather be anywhere else than here. A strange, heavy feeling settles in the pit of Trip’s stomach. Not for the first time in his life, he regrets opening his mouth.

-

It’s a few days later when he sees Malcolm again, in the mess. Phlox’s insane alien liquor hadn’t quite left him unable to remember what he’d said. All he’d been left with was a headache that felt like his skull was being cracked open like a coconut. Hoshi and Travis haven’t said anything, thank God. He’s pretty sure Elizabeth won’t either. Trip just doesn’t know what came over him. He’s thirty years old, the chief engineer on Starfleet’s flagship vessel, and he was necking booze like it was his first year at the Academy. It’s been a wild few months, sure, but-

He spots Malcolm then, sitting at a table by one of the observation panels. He’s alone, and Trip doesn’t really think about what he’s doing until he’s standing there looking over him, tray in hand. Malcolm looks up at him, something clearly on the tip of his tongue. Trip saves him the effort. “Anyone sitting here?” he asks.

“No,” Malcolm says. He fiddles with the food on his plate, evidently untouched. “I was just finishing up, actually.”

“Don’t,” Trip says. “Please,” he adds. He sits down. “Look, I really embarrassed myself the other night. It wasn’t really your scene, and we all nagged you to stay, and, well. I’m sorry. If it’s any consolation, you certainly don’t have anything to worry about it. You didn’t even drink any of the stuff Elizabeth brought along.”

For a moment, Trip thinks that Malcolm is going to up and leave anyway. Then he sighs, and sits back in his chair. He prods his fork into his pasta like it’s offending him. “I should have just left. It wasn’t your fault.” He takes a breath. “Look, Commander-”

There’s something about the way Malcolm uses his rank then, all short and unnecessarily curt. It takes Trip a minute, but then the proverbial penny drops like an A-bomb. “Oh my God,” he says. He leans in closer. “You think I slept my way to the top.”

Malcolm looks at him, eyes wide. Stunned into speechlessness, evidently. “ _What_?” he says, a good deal quieter than Trip but just as urgent. “What on Earth are you talking about?”

“After I said about Jon and I, you got all shirty with me, and I know you’re a real straight-laced type, and-”

“Commander,” Malcolm says.

“ _Trip_ ,” Trip corrects him,

“Fine, Trip. I can promise you that the thought certainly never crossed my mind.”

Trip looks at him, feeling like he’s missing something acutely important. “Well, why have you been all. You know. Weird?”

Malcolm looks at him, doesn’t drop his gaze for a good few seconds. His eyes are blue, bluer than Trip has ever noticed before. He finds that these days, he’s noticing all of these new and exciting things about Malcolm. The hue of his eyes. The way his left shoulder gives him grief whenever they head somewhere cold. The way he purses his lips when he’s thinking hard about something.

“I drunk a little too much, that’s all,” he says, finally. “Much more than I would normally. Did you see the way I dragged Ensign Sato around?”

“Terrible dancing’s hardly on par with insubordination,” Trip says.

“Oh,” Malcolm says. “Terrible, was it?” Trip feels the mood shift then, and he allows himself a smile.

“Awful,” he says. “I mean, I would have put you in the brig for it right away, but-”

Malcolm laughs then, a short but lovely thing. “Alright, alright. Look, let’s forget it. The whole night. I went back to my quarters and read a book. You left when they had to carry Crewman Lourey out. Nothing happened and we both woke up completely sober the next day.”

Trip feels relived beyond belief that Malcolm doesn’t think badly of him, that he was just embarrassed at having precisely three bottles of beer. It’s endearing, really. “All forgotten already,” he says. He points at Malcolm’s plate, to the pasta that’s stone cold now. “Go on,” he says. “Eat up. Can’t have one of my best officers running on empty.”

“No more antics,” Malcolm says, picking up his fork again. He points it at Trip. “Let’s just get on with the work.”

“Whatever you want,” Trip says. He means it.

-

“So,” Malcolm says. “So much for no more antics.”

“Shut it,” Trip says. Then, a second later: “Pass me that spanner.”

It’s like something out of a bad holonovel – or a porno, if Trip is being really honest with himself. Two guys trapped on a shuttlepod, with nothing but a bottle of bourbon and the ever-increasing threat of death to keep them from boredom. When Malcolm starts composing letters to all the people he’d hooked up with back on Earth – and they were all fleeting encounters, judging by the length of the list of names he’s working through – Trip’s near ready to drink himself into a coma.

“Just picture it,” Trip says. “You slept with, well, you, and you-”

“I’d rephrase that, Commander,” Malcolm says. He sighs, and comes to sit next to Trip on the floor of the shuttle. It’s getting colder now, and the tips of Trip’s fingers are turning numb. Still, he can feel the warmth of Malcolm’s body against his as they sit flank to to flank, scant as it is.

“I’m not looking to atone, if that’s what you think,” Malcolm says. “I’m just tying up some loose ends.”

“Whatever,” Trip says, and he watches Malcolm’s hands work at a stray thread on his uniform. He’d be lying if the dizzying list of Malcolm’s paramours back in San Francisco wasn’t affecting him. Jealousy sits stubbornly in the pit of his stomach, no matter how much he wills it away. “Just as long as I can get some sleep.”

Once the air supply in the shuttlepod starts to dwindle and their prospects of rescue look increasingly slim, they get drunk. Malcolm takes a long swig from the bottle, and coughs. Trip laughs, and takes it from him. “I haven’t drunk this stuff this since I was a cadet,” Malcolm says.

“I had my money on never,” Trips says. The bourbon burns all the way down, but it’s a welcome flare of warmth. Malcolm frowns at him, and Trip, absurdly, feels like laughing. “You know, seeing as you’re a model officer and all.”

“You think I’m uptight,” Malcolm says.

“Well, if it’s any consolation it’s not just me,” Trip says. “I’d say anyone who’s spent more than five seconds with you would probably come to the same conclusion.”

“I’m not,” Malcolm says. “Just stating that for the record. I do know how to have fun every now and then.”

“Yeah, well when we make it back to the ship you can show me,” Trip says.

Malcolm hums – the little non-committal sound he’s taken to making rather than argue with Trip. They’re too tired for that now.

“Trip,” Malcolm says. “About earlier, I-”

“Oh God,” Trip says. “It’s fine. Really. Those letters were important to you. I shouldn’t have flown off the handle like that.” He feels bad for it now, the brief relief of yelling at Malcolm long faded. Who cares if he wants to send a thousand messages? Trip would rather listen to him, saying the same thing over and over, than face any of this alone.

Malcolm frowns. “I don’t want you to think that – well. That I’m some kind of _cad._ ”

Trip grins, despite himself. “Oh yeah? Leaving a trail of broken hearts across San Francisco? I mean I didn’t have you pegged for-”

“Trip,” Malcolm says – and he’s serious now. “I want to tell you something.”

Trip shifts underneath the blanket so that he can get a good look at Malcolm. His lips are pursed, and his arms are drawn tightly across his chest. “Hey,” Trip says. “I’m sorry. Please, please. Tell me.”

“You’re so...sincere sometimes,” Malcolm says. “I’d almost prefer it if you’d tell me to piss off, actually.” He sighs, and Trip doesn’t push him. A minute passes, and then he picks up where he left off. “When I was younger, I didn’t really know how to – _God,_ this is mortifying.” He rubs at his face, fingers skirting across the stubble at his jaw. He begins again. “As you probably gathered, none of my relationships have been particularly…serious.”

Trip shrugs. “Well, neither have mine.” He thinks of Natalie, and leaving Earth without even stopping to say goodbye to her. What a guy he is.

Malcolm shakes his head. “You don’t understand. I’m not like you. It’s all so easy for you – half the crew are in love with you and the other half are jealous of you. With me, it’s-”

“You really don’t have to explain,” Trip says.

“I do,” Malcolm says. He takes a deep breath. “I didn’t know how to _be_ with anyone. I still don’t. There’s never been anyone. Either they haven’t stuck around, or I’ve gotten out of there before they had a chance to. Every time I get close to someone, I panic.” He fiddles with the lid of the bottle. “I think there might be something wrong with me.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” Trip says, and without thinking, he takes Malcolm’s hand. It’s cold, and it fits into Trips palm just perfectly. Malcolm doesn’t react, but he doesn’t pull his hand away. He looks down at their clasped palms, pressed together tightly in a futile attempt to generate any warmth.

“I would have liked to have tried” Malcolm says, and he looks Trip dead in the eye. “If I’d had the chance. I would have liked to try with someone.” He looks up at the ceiling then, a desperate little jerk of his head. “Those letters,” he says. “I suppose I wanted to apologize. I feel as though I led those people on.”

“Hey,” Trip says – and for a brief moment, he wonders how he got here, half-mad with hypothermia and dishing out life advice to Malcolm Reed. “You were young. You were hurting – and I can’t pretend to know why, but I’m pretty sure that you never wanted to hurt anyone else.” He squeezes Malcolm’s hand. More than anything though, he wants to pull Malcolm close – so he does. They are cold, and they are probably about to die. There’s nothing selfish about finding a little comfort in this moment. Trip sighs, and watches his breath in the cold air. It won’t be long.

He’s just about to close his eyes – and God, everything’s going a little fuzzy around the edges now – when Malcolm speaks. “The captain,” he says.

“Yes?” Trip says, unsure where this is going.

“Do you love him?”

Trip doesn’t even have to hesitate. “Of course I do,” he says. He loves so easily, and he’d loved Jon the minute he’d met him. Had loved him all the way through that year they’d spent together, had loved him when Jon had said _Trip, we can’t do this anymore._ He loves Hoshi. He loves Travis. He loves the way T’Pol arches one eyebrow when Jon makes a joke over breakfast. He loves the way Porthos waits outside his quarters for a walk when Jon has to take the gamma shift. He even loves Phlox, loves the care he takes in keeping them all together. There’s something else he should articulate, something so very, very important, but-

“I’m so tired,” he says, and his words are slurred and without form. “Aren’t you tired?”

“Exhausted,” Malcolm says. He sounds small, and far away. Unconsciousness comes then, sweet and welcome – and Trip doesn’t fight it.

-

Coming to terms with your imminent death is hard. The thing is, no one tells you that leaving behind the possibility of dying is infinitely harder once you’ve looked it in the eye. Phlox tells him to think about counseling before he slaps him with a five-day relief of his duties. “No one would think any less of you if you wanted to, let’s say, _examine_ what’s happened during these past few months.”

Trip doesn’t need to ask if Malcolm’s been told to talk things through, because this isn’t just about their time in the shuttle. It’s about what led him to be very well acquainted with this examination table a few months ago. “It’s alright Doc,” he says.

(It’s not. He thinks of that spell in Sickbay a few months back. He was high as a kite on painkillers but still aware of the throbbing emptiness in a deep, secret place just below his ribs. _She’s quite settled in a new host now,_ Phlox had said – and Trip had felt unspeakably ill at that. A host. It’d been like something out of a horror movie, but now she was gone, and it was all hormones, of course it was but-)

“If you say so, Commander,” Phlox says.

-

There’s nothing that Trip hates more than waking up for alpha shift. However, being forcibly removed from duty comes a close second. Especially when you wake up at 05:00 out of habit, and then there’s nothing that you can do to get back to sleep. Eventually, he gives up and heads to the bathroom. The light comes on suddenly, and Trip has to close his eyes against the glare. Slowly, he opens them again.

If there were any doubts that their rendezvous with near death in the shuttle had taken its toll, Trip’s reflection does away with them. He looks like shit, just about matching how awful he feels. He braces his hand against the countertop, fingertips pressed into the cool steel of the sink. His other hand, a motion of habit by this point, finds its way underneath his t-shirt. He rubs at the spot on his side, flat now.

Before he thinks about what he’s doing, he pulls up his shirt and stares at his torso in the mirror. He’s half expecting his reflection to show him as he was a few months ago, even though he can feel nothing but rib and muscle as he splays his palm across his side. He closes his eyes for a long moment, and breathes.

He knows that this isn’t healthy, and that he really should take up Phlox’s offer. Where would he even begin, though? _You see, I was knocked up by an alien and I was wondering if you had anything on that in your textbooks, Doc._ Trip doesn’t even know how he’s meant to feel. Is he supposed to find it funny like everyone else on board? That’s the trouble with being the first person to go through anything as monumentally fucked up as this. Advice isn’t exactly easy to come by.

Trip opens his eyes again. He takes a long, hard look at his own reflection. The fact that he looks so normal is what bothers him. Maybe if there had been a scar or something, tangible proof that it really happened and he’s not just going mad – yeah. Yeah. That might help.

He wishes for nothing more than the clamor and chaos of Engineering, to be surrounded by the hum of the engines and the chatter of his staff.

-

It’s hard to get hold of Malcolm once they’re back on duty. Trip thinks that he might be embarrassed, that Trip would somehow hold everything that Malcolm had told him in the shuttle against him. He remembers how he’d overreacted after the party a few weeks back. Malcolm is fiercely private, and the only thing he has tried to make more impenetrable than the ship’s defenses is himself. Well, Trip isn’t having that. He finds Malcolm in the armory – of course he's in the armory. He should just move his bed in here and be done with it.

"Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but gamma shift ended an hour ago," Trip says. "Come on. Let's get something to eat."

Malcolm shakes his head. "I just need to finish re-routing the main power supply from Storeroom C." He looks up at Trip. "I'll eat later."

Malcolm isn’t so good at taking care of himself when he thinks that there’s something more important to be done. A translation: he doesn’t eat. He forgets to eat. He doesn’t want to eat. Whatever the reason, it happens too often. Everyone on the ship knows this. It’s why Chef always slips a little extra food onto Malcolm’s plate when he shows up in the mess after holing himself up in here for three days. It’s why Trip is here now, really.

"Need a hand?” Trip says. “I'm sure we'll get it done quicker between the two of us." Malcolm doesn't say anything, but he doesn't refuse. "I think I might know a good engineer," he says.

"Ah," Malcolm says. "Well when you put it like that." He looks at Trip then, a quick up and down that doesn’t quite match the distance in his voice. He sighs. “Fine.” He gestures at a laser rule just beside Trip. “Pass me that, would you?”

Trip does as he’s told, and kneels down on the floor next to Malcolm. There’s no one else here but the two of them, no background conversation to cut through the silence. Trip looks at the jumble of wires in front of them, and his brain works as it always does. In three seconds, he knows what needs to go where, and he also knows that there was never really a problem in the first place. This? This is an upgrade that could have waited weeks. Now it’s his turn to sigh. "God, why are you even doing this? We haven't run into anyone for days, we're out here in the boonies-"

"Don't," Malcolm says. "They sound like famous last words."

Trip has to laugh then, and he nudges at Malcolm’s arm with the spanner. "You're always expecting the worst."

Malcolm looks at him, incredulous. "That's literally my job, Commander." He looks back at the innards of the cannon, and gingerly pushes a wire to the side. “Keeping you all alive.”

“Nothing’s going to happen-”

“Well, I’m sure that we both thought exactly the same thing before we stepped into that shuttle.”

Oh.

“Malcolm,” Trip says, gentling. “Are you-”

“Think very, very carefully before you finish asking that question,” Malcolm says. He shifts so that he’s sitting up against the wall now, further way from Trip. “I’m not going to have you take me off duty.”

“Like I’d do that,” Trip says. “Fine. I’ll start. I haven’t been sleeping well since we got back. I keep dreaming about the shuttle, and-” and here he stops.

Malcolm looks at him. “And?”

Trip groans. “You know what, I think I’m getting a raw deal here. I can’t ask you a question, but you can ask me one?”

They fall silent then, and the armory is so, so quiet that Trip can hear the sound of Malcolm breathing. The silence stretches on and out, beyond them and between them – and then Malcolm speaks. “I haven’t been sleeping either,” he says. He takes a deep breath, one that Trip can almost feel in his own chest. “This,” and he gestures at the mess of wires and tools between them, “seemed like a better idea.”

“Turned out well,” Trip said – and that finally gets a laugh from Malcolm. He relaxes then, the tension leaving him, and lets one leg straighten out against the floor. He turns to look at Trip. “What?” Trip says.

“Nothing,” Malcolm says. Only, clearly, it isn’t, because a moment later he’s speaking again. “You’re very insistent.”

“One of my many talents,” Trip says.

Malcolm fixes him with a look that suggests that wasn’t quite what he meant. “I thought that after- After I’d-”

"Were you avoiding me?" Malcolm doesn't deny it, and the back of his neck turns red. "Wow," Trip says. "You were."

"I wasn't! I just didn't want you to feel-" and he groans, a very un-Malcolm sound. "I can't explain. I'm just not used to-"

"You're so _English_ ," Trip says. "Just talk to me. Don't close yourself off."

Malcolm glares at him, but he can’t hold it for long. He looks down at his feet. "I'm not very good at this," he says. "I've never really been...myself with anyone." He sighs. “You seem to bring out something entirely different in me.”

“That a bad thing?” Trip says. “It’s not a crime to-” and here, he stops to find the words. Words that are careful and neutral, the total opposite of Trip’s racing thoughts. “Friends,” he says. “It’s not a crime to have friends.” He takes a deep breath, and stands up. He holds a hand out for Malcolm to take. “Come on,” he says. “Chef’s laid on something special tonight. Can’t let a bunch of crewman get first dibs.”

Malcolm stares at him like he’s grown a second head – but he takes Trip’s hand.

-

One night, after a shift that had turned into two, he finds himself outside Malcolm’s door. He’s never been inside his quarters – but he’d memorized where they were a long time ago. He hesitates for a moment. He’s been on duty for so long he can’t remember if it’s Malcolm’s day off tomorrow, or if he’s about to head out for his shift.

He presses the chime anyway.

It takes a minute, but Malcolm does open the door. He’s bleary-eyed and wearing a t-shirt and joggers. Malcolm never looks anything less than perfectly put-together, with his neat clothes and steam-pressed persona, so-

“You were asleep,” Trip says.

If Malcolm had been a little more awake, he might have rolled his eyes. “Adeptly observed, Commander,” he says. He relaxes a little. “I’m assuming that there isn’t an emergency.”

“God, no. It’s just, well-” and Trip rubs the back of his neck. “Look, I’ve worked a double shift, and I guess I didn’t feel like sleeping just yet, so.”

So.

Malcolm looks at him carefully, and then sighs. “Come on in then.”

Malcolm’s quarters are pretty much just how Trip imagined them. Meticulously tidy, with the exception of the unmade bed. On a small shelf just opposite his bunk there are a few books – and would you look at that – a ship in a bottle. Trip takes a step closer to take a look. _HMS Enterprize, 1743_ , the little plaque on the mount reads.

“From my sister,” Malcolm says, and Trip hadn’t realized that he was standing so close. “Seeing as I let everyone down by choosing space over the sea, she thought I should remember my roots.” He scoffs. “I didn’t even realize until I was on board, she must have snuck it into my luggage.”

Trip looks back at the shelf. The books are just what he expected. Some tricky Vulcan literature mixed in with some old Earth classics. A couple of slim volumes that Trip thinks might be Bajoran. “Not a comic book in sight still, I see.” he says, turning back to face Malcolm.

Malcolm does roll his eyes then. “ _Trip,_ ” he says – and what a thrill that is still, to have Malcolm call him that without any prompting. “Is this what this is all about?”

“Yeah,” he says. “It’s all about comic books. Tell you what, we’ll do a swap. I’ll take-” and he reaches for the least threatening looking book on the shelf “-this one, and then you can get stuck in to Flash Gordon.”

“Delightful,” Malcolm says. It’s not a no though.

Trip looks back at the ship in a bottle. “Your sister,” he begins. “Are you close?” Malcolm never talks about her, and Trip thinks of Lizzie back home, and feels his heart swell in his chest. God, he can’t imagine not missing her terribly.

“I suppose so,” Malcolm says. “We call each other every couple of months or so.” Trip stares, and he shrugs. “What?”

“You _suppose_ so?”

“Trip. My family are the entire opposite of yours. Consider that the equivalent of any other siblings living in each other’s pockets.” He sits down on his bed, leaving enough room for Trip to do the same. “Did you come here to interrogate me?”

Trip sighs, taking in the terseness of Malcolm’s voice, the tight set of his shoulders. “No, I’m sorry. You’re just very, well, intriguing.”

“Intriguing?”

“I barely know anything about you really. You know, your failed romantic endeavors aside.”

Malcolm relaxes, back in familiar territory now. “You really know how to make a man feel good. First you come in and insult my taste in literature, then you start needling at me about my sister, and _then_ you bring that up. Are you sure you weren’t just itching for a fight?”

“I just wanted to spend time with you,” Trip says – and there’s tiredness setting in deep in his bones now. He can blame the honesty on that. “I feel like ever since we made it back after our little shuttle detour-”

“In which we nearly died, I might remind you-”

“I want to spend time with you, but I never seem to have the chance,” Trip finishes, ignoring Malcolm’s morbid interjection. He does have a point, of course, but those last few hours on the shuttle, when they had been pressed in close alongside each other, sharing warmth and secrets, had been something close to profound.

Malcolm looks at him for a long, warm second. “Oh,” he says.

Trip can see how unusual this must be for Malcolm, to have someone wanting to be here in his space with him, itching to get to know him. He can almost feel the tugging, the see-sawing between the Malcolm that wants to be open and cared for, and the Malcolm that pushes everyone who gets too close to him away. His Malcolm, and the other Malcolm.

Trip smiles, and opens the book he’d taken from the shelf barely five minutes ago. “So,” he says. “Care to enlighten me? I’ve never ever heard of this one before.” He holds his breath, and waits.

Malcolm looks from Trip’s face to the book, and back again. His bare feet brush against the edge of Trip’s boots, but it may as well be skin-on-skin. He reaches for the book, and traces a finger along the edge of the page.

He turns it, and Trip breathes.

-

“You know, I never had you pegged as much of a reader,” Jon says.

Trip looks up from the book – dog eared and covered in injector grease now – and feels himself flush. “It’s Malcolm’s,” he says without thinking, and immediately wants to kick himself for it.

“Oh,” Jon says, and there’s that look in his eyes, the prelude to needling at Trip until he fesses up. “Hoshi did say that the two of you had gotten a little closer lately, but I-”

Thankfully, Jon’s little speech is cut short by the sound of the doors opening, and boy, Trip has never been more glad to see T’Pol. “Captain,” she says, taking her place at the table. She looks at Trip – and damn, can Vulcans _smell_ embarrassment?. “Commander.”

Trip nods, and crams his mouth full of cornbread while Jon starts running through the day’s schedule. He thinks he’s just about got away with it until Jon pipes up again. “I hear Lieutenant Reed is running a book club,” he says to T’Pol, although his eyes dart from her to Trip. “Perhaps you’d like to familiarize yourself with some Earth classics?”

“I rarely find Human literature...stimulating,” is T’Pol’s reply.

“Ah,” says Jon. “Looks like it’s just you and Malcolm then,” he says to Trip.

Trip grimaces around his mouthful of food, and ignores the way T’Pol’s eyes are boring two large holes into the side of his head. Once she’s gone, at 06:45 on the dot, Jon grins. “I don’t know what you’re smiling at,” Trip says.

“You’ve got it bad, huh?” Jon says, shaking his head all the while.

“I’d be careful if I were you,” Trip says. “Piss off your Chief Engineer, and this ship is gonna be going nowhere fast for weeks.”

Jon raises his hands in mock defense. “Alright, alright. You know I’m just messing with you. It’s just, well, no one can get a spare word out of Malcolm. He never comes to hang out in the mess on Fridays, he never wants to spar – you get where I’m going here. Except when it comes to you.”

“It must be my charming personality,” Trip says.

“I can attest to that,” Jon says – and there it is. The weight of their shared history, in a handful of words. It sneaks up on Trip, sometimes.

Trip sighs. “Look Jon. There’s no – you know. Funny stuff going on. I know that there’s rules, and that you don’t really want-”

“Look Trip,” Jon says, echoing. “If I was going to act on every single report of fraternization on this ship, I’d have no time to do any work. A bunch of aliens could come running into my office and I’d have to say _hold up fellas, I’ve just got to add this reprimand onto Crewman March’s record._ No one thought that we’d be able to enforce it. As long as it doesn’t affect your work, I’m fine with it.”

Trip knows that it won’t. Malcolm is a good officer – dedicated to his work, professional to a fault. Trip values his work too, even if his approach is a little more chaotic than Malcolm’s. He’s worked hard for years to be assigned to a mission like this, and he’s not about to throw it away for-

Wait, for what? Malcolm clearly isn’t interested in anything more than this tentative, awkward friendship they’ve established. So he stands up, tucks the book into the crook of his arm, and lets Jon pat him on the shoulder.

-

One day, when Jon is sleeping off the gamma shift and T’Pol is going over a report with Hoshi, Trip takes his breakfast in the mess. He does what he should have done weeks ago, and starts typing out a series of messages to his sister. He starts with the usual rundown of the places they’ve been and the people they’ve met – leaving out some details that would be better explained in person.

_[Tucker, Charles – 7484C27056CT1ENCRYPTED – 07:28AM]_

_I’m sorry it’s been so long. There’s so much to tell you, and I keep thinking that I’ll save it all for one day – but I think I’d need about a week before we even got halfway through it. Have you seen Natalie lately? I keep meaning to get in touch with her, but I don’t really know what to say. Tell her there’s no bad blood. Please._

He stops here, deliberating whether to tell Lizzie more.

_I’m gonna be honest. There is someone. Well, sort of. Someone and no-one. Something and nothing. I don’t think he’s interested at all, but you know me. A pathological romantic._

He presses send on that before he can stop himself, and ties things up in a new message.

_[Tucker, Charles – 7484C27056CT1ENCRYPTED – 07:29AM]_

_Give Mom and Dad a hug from me when you’re next home, and be careful with your new speeder!!! The levitation propellers suck on those new models – take it down to Frank’s and they’ll swap them out for some better ones. Yeah, I know. Off world and still lecturing you. What are you gonna do? Love ya._

“Morning,” comes a familiar voice – and Trip exits the messaging window quicker than you can say warp speed. He opens up the daily newsfeed as Malcolm sits down, doing what he hopes is a very convincing job of reading it.

“Morning to you,” he says.

Malcolm nods down at the PADD. “What are the headlines today?”

“Well,” Trip says, scanning the screen for anything of interest. “Apparently Lela Yurani has just completed the Tharsis Montes challenge.” Trip looks at the woman in the picture, dark hair pulled back, Trill spots visible through a thick dusting of Martian soil. “You ever tried mountain climbing?” he asks Malcolm.

“Yes,” Malcolm says. “My father used to take me when I was small. Character building.” He takes a tiny bite of his toast. “Apparently.”

“Ah,” Trip says. “Fun for all the family.” He reads on through the day’s news briefing. Steady progress in the Warp 6 study back on Earth. A new superhotel opening on the Moon. A pretty unimpressive crime syndicate uncovered on one of the Venusian space stations. He swipes the tab aside, clearing the screen. “Slow news day,” he says, putting the PADD down. As he does, it bleeps. Once, then again. Thirty seconds pass. Again.

Malcolm stares down at it. “Are you going to answer those?”

Trip grimaces. “Oh,” he says. “They’re probably nothing important.”

His PADD makes another noise.

“Sounds it to me,” Malcolm says. He looks at Trip expectantly – and there’s nothing Trip can do except hold the PADD at an awkward angle, and pray.

_[Tucker, Elizabeth – x4thty67ENCRYPTED – 07:38AM]_

_First of all, I swapped the damn propellers out myself. You left all your old manuals here. It makes a bit of a rattling noise when I take it up into eighth gear, but that’s fine, right?_

_[Tucker, Elizabeth – x4thty67ENCRYPTED – 07:38AM]_

_I’m joking. Don’t show that message to Mom to try and get one over on me._

“It’s my sister,” he says to Malcolm. “I was just, uh, giving her some advice on her new speeder.”

“Oh,” Malcolm says. He takes a sip of his tea. “How’s it running?”

_[Tucker, Elizabeth – x4thty67ENCRYPTED – 07:39AM]_

_I knew it! You’re always shifty when you’re infatuated with someone new. What’s his name? Do you work together? Well, I suppose everyone on the ship works together, but you know what I mean. Is he nice?_

“It’s in fine form,” Trip says, deleting the message before it can incriminate him. He reads the last one on the screen.

_[Tucker, Elizabeth – x4thty67ENCRYPTED – 07:39AM]_

_I’m interrupting, aren’t I? Oh my God. I am. Don’t ask me how I know. Listen, I’m going to a conference in Tangiers tomorrow. One of my old professors is giving the keynote speech, and it seemed too fun to miss out on. Can we talk when I get back? Not like this. Get Jon to set up one of those video comms. Okay. I love you. Be careful. ;)_

Trip fires off a quick reply.

_[Tucker, Charles – 7484C27056CT1ENCRYPTED – 07:44AM]_

_You’re so annoying._

_[Tucker, Elizabeth – x4thty67ENCRYPTED – 07:45AM]_

_I’ll be back in three days!_

Trip turns the PADD off then, but he can’t help smiling as he does. “What?” Malcolm says.

Trip grins, and raises his cup of coffee. “Sisters, huh?” he says. “God love ‘em.”

-

“You’re on the fastest ship in the fleet, with the best technology you could ask for. And the signal is _this_ bad?”

Trip sits cross legged on his bed, and shrugs at the screen. “Well, what can I do about it?”

“Well,” Lizzie says, “it is kind of your department.”

She looks well. Tanned from her trip, and just that little bit more assured than when Trip left Earth. It’s when Trip sees her like this, after such a prolonged absence, that he can see how alike they are. The same hair, the same ski-slope nose. The same impatience.

“I’ll be sure to fix it up. Just for you,” he says. He sits back a little. “How was your trip?”

“Oh, it was _great_ ,” she begins – and then she’s off, a mile a minute. Trip nods as she talks, but his mind is already wandering a little. He’s so tired, he’s just come off a 20 hour shift. He wonders what Malcolm’s doing right now.

“Oh my God,” Lizzie says. “You’re not listening to a word I’m saying.”

“I am!” Trip says. “You were just saying how great the conference was, and wh-”

“You’re in love,” Lizzie says.

“Shut up,” Trip says.

“That’s not a denial.”

Trip groans. “I should never have told you,” he says. “It’s not even- I mean. _Fuck._ He’s not interested, Liz.”

Lizzie frowns. “How do you know? Have you asked him?”

“Uh, no. We’re going to have to work with each other for the next five years. I’m not taking that risk.”

Lizzie looks like she’s going to argue with that, but after a second she sighs. “Oh, Trip. I wish I could hug you.” She leans in closer to the screen, her hair falling around her face. “Tell me about him.”

“Well. His name’s Malcolm. He’s English, and he’s annoying as hell. He’s prissy and obsessed with work, and, God, you won’t believe this, he-” and with that, he’s off. It feels good to talk. Lizzie doesn’t try to stop him, or ask any questions. She just lets him talk, and talk, and eventually Trip runs out of steam.

“Wow,” she says. “He sounds…”

“He’s wonderful,” Trip says, and means it.

“I don’t doubt it,” Lizzie says. “Look. Sometimes people surprise you. Try and get some ideas from him. You know, be subtle.”

“I don’t think subtlety is a Tucker trait,” Trip says. The door chime rings then – and that’s going to be Jon. He always likes saying hi to Lizzie. “Hang on,” he says to her. “There’s a starship captain here to say hello.” “Come in!” he calls, and the door swishes open.

“Sorry, I know it’s late,” comes a distinctly un-Jon voice. “But I just wanted to- Oh. Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you had company.”

Malcolm looks at his sister, and Lizzie looks right back at him. A moment, seemingly infinite, passes. “Well,” she says. “Either space travel’s changed Jon completely, or you need to make some introductions Trip.”

Trip coughs. “Right,” he says. “Malcolm, this is my sister Lizzie. Lizzie, this is Malcolm.” He pauses. “My friend.”

Malcolm stands a little straighter. “It’s a pleasure,” he says.

“Oh, you too,” Lizzie says. “Trip’s just been telling me all about you.” She grins. “Anyway, look. It’s getting a little late here, so I’m gonna turn in. Trip, don’t forget to call Mom. Malcolm, it was lovely to meet you. Take care out there. You know, stay alive.”

“You too,” says Trip.

“Oh, you don’t need to worry about me. I’ve got no aspirations to leave Earth for the minute.” She yawns, clearly exaggerated. “Goodnight!” she says. “Sleep tight,” and with that, she’s gone. A minute later, Trip’s PADD buzzes. He picks it up, and steals a look before Malcolm can catch a glimpse of it.

_[Tucker, Elizabeth – x4thty67ENCRYPTED – 23:29PM]_

_You’re both losers. Ask him!!!_

“She’s just like you,” Malcolm says. He sits down on Trip’s be beside him, in the spot where Trip has crinkled the sheets. “Double trouble.”

-

A week, maybe two. They’re on Qimiaros now, a planet that’s small but brimming with life. The people are chatty and forthright, with skin the color of baked clay and huge, gleaming eyes. Travis doesn’t like them much, says that they stare, but Trip doesn’t mind ‘em. Especially when they let him rummage through an engine – well, ask him to fix something. This is a simple, thrilling joy. When everything is aligned and that little speeder lifts up off the ground, he grins. “We’ll eat tonight,” says Dalol, the mechanic who’s been watching to make sure Trip doesn’t electrocute himself. “Bring your friends.”

“There’s a lot of them,” Trip says, and takes Dalol’s outstretched hand as he pulls himself up off the ground. “I wouldn’t want to bother you.”

“I have twenty-nine sisters,” Dalol says. “We’re used to cooking for a crowd.” He slaps Trip on the back, and before Trip can spend another second thinking about how incredibly fertile these people are, he laughs. “Find your friends,” he says, gentle and earnest. “We’ll eat at the second sundown.”

So Trip does, and eat they do. There’s Jon, and Travis, placated by the mountains of food. Hoshi, Phlox, even T’Pol. There’s his team from Engineering, a couple of girls from the armory – Chef too, obviously keen to nab some recipes. At Trip’s side, knees pressed against his, is Malcolm. He leans across Trip to reach for a plate of food, and their arms touch. Trip can feel Hoshi’s gaze on them, can almost hear her mind whirring over the commotion of the meal. Trip doesn’t catch her eye, and looks at Malcolm’s hands as he peels fruit instead.

Later, there is music. Although the sun went down hours ago, it’s still just as warm as a high summer’s day back on Earth. Trip dances with Hoshi, lifting her up by her waist and laughing as she yells at him to put her down.

“Where’s Malcolm?” she asks after a while. She looks at Trip expectantly, as if he’s got some kind of tracking device up his sleeve.

Trip feels a little loose now, the heat and whatever the Qimiari are filling their glasses with making him feel warm all over. “I don’t know,” he says. “When did you last see him?”

“Just before the music started,” she says. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have stolen you away to dance.”

“Don’t you worry,” Trip says, twirling her under his arm. “You and I both know that he’s no dancer,” - and so it goes on. The night stretches on, hours passing as they drink, dance and make the most of the hospitality of their new friends.

Eventually, when the light of the second dawn begins to nudge at the horizon, Trip sets off to look for Malcolm. He lets the motion of everyone’s movement push him outwards, towards the edge of the courtyard. It’s cooler here, but still balmy. Beyond the confines of the courtyard the ground drops away into a vast, pale desert. There, perched on a low wall, is Malcolm. He looks up as Trip approaches, and shakes his head. “If you’re going to ask me to dance...”

Trip laughs, and comes to sit on the wall beside him. “Don’t worry,” he says. “I don’t think anyone back there wants to see that again.”

To the west, the rising sun turns the dark sky a deep blue. Malcolm casts his gaze to the east, where the racing approach of dawn hasn’t yet managed to catch up with the stars that still glimmer there. Trip knows what he’s looking for – it’s all any of them do when faced with a new sky on a new world. Out here, the Sun can’t even be seen with the naked eye, but if you look _just_ there, in that little gap between stars – yeah. You’re looking at everything you left behind.

“Do you miss it?” Malcolm asks.

“Yeah,” Trip says. He doesn’t even need to think about it. “I miss my mom’s cooking. I miss my sister barging into my room. I miss the feeling of grass, real Earth grass, under my feet.”

“But here you are.”

“But here I am. Cursed to be an explorer.” Malcolm huffs a little laugh at that. “What about you?” Trip asks. “Do you miss home?”

“No,” Malcolm says. “Not really.” He sounds remarkably unbothered by it. He looks at Trip, steady as the rising mountains on the far horizons. “I meant what I said back on the shuttle. I’ve never really felt at home anywhere before.” He takes a deep breath, and then smiles. The littlest of smiles – and Trip will never forget it. “But I do now.”

Trip doesn’t know what to say to that, so he moves closer instead. It must only be an inch or so, the minutest shuffle of his hips, but at the same time, Malcolm does the same. The silence that follows is heavy with potential, and Trip casts his gaze upwards. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if he looks Malcolm in the eye right now. Malcolm, who is polite to a fault, who is rapidly becoming a good friend. He can’t risk it.

“The book,” he says after a while. “I liked it.”

“You’re a fast reader,” Malcolm says.

“Yeah, well, no emergencies to deal with in Engineering this week. I’ll drop it back this week, and maybe you can find another one for me.” He speaks quickly, afraid to ask, afraid to impose. Best to just go in full throttle, half drunk and stupid with it.

Malcolm hums, and Trip feels his gaze settle on his neck, tracking up to his chin. “I’d like that,” he says.

Up above them, the stars shimmer against the approach of a new day, a canopy of blue and gold and burnished red.

-

Malcolm keeps his promise, and Hoshi catches him reading in the mess, absentmindedly twirling noodles around his fork. Trip looks up to see her shake her head and smile, and then she’s gone, swallowed up by the line of crewman waiting for a slice of apple pie.

-

A month. A checkup. No one mentions why Trip is called to Sickbay just that little bit more often than anyone else, how Phlox runs his scanner along Trip’s side, a well traveled path now. He moves in a slow circle, coming to a pause with the scanner held above Trip’s belly button. “Hmm,” he says, and then turns it off. “Nothing unusual Commander. No excess scar tissue, no abnormal blood vessel formation. Your hormone levels are normal too. If I were treating you for the very first time, I’d have no idea that you were ever-”

“Thanks Doc,” Trip says. “Really. Don’t mention it.”

Phlox puts his scanner down, entirely unbothered by Trip’s bluntness. “Now,” he says. “A quick questionnaire, if you will. Ten minutes of your time, Commander. Nothing more.”

“Sure,” Trip says, and immediately lets his mind start to wander as Phlox reels off question after question. He thinks about taking apart a speeder’s engine as he says yes. He thinks about that article on hitting Warp 6 he’ll read with dinner tonight as he says no. Then’s Phlox’s voice cuts through the jumble of his thoughts, and he has to ask him to repeat himself.

“Any sexual activity?” Phlox says. His expression is perfectly neutral, if a little expectant.

“Well,” Trip begins. “No. Obviously.”

“Obviously?”

Trip blinks. Phlox doesn’t. “Obviously,” he repeats.

“A curious Human trait,” Phlox says. “Repetition in place of elaboration. Forgive me. I’ll rephrase. You said ‘obviously’. Why?”

“Well,” Trip says. “When you’re the subject of numerous medical papers back on Earth, and you spent a while looking like-” and here, he pauses. How to describe it. He goes for the bluntest possible word, strong enough to cut across any cross-cultural confusion that’s occurring here. “-a freak, you’re not exactly in high demand.”

Phlox hums, and gets back to work. Trips swings his legs back and forth, perched awkwardly on the edge of the biobed. Eventually, Phlox speaks. “It’s like I said, Mr. Tucker. No one would ever know.”

“Yeah, well, I do.” _Malcolm does,_ a traitorous part of his brain supplies.

“All things heal,” Phlox says, and his voice is so gentle and kind. “I’ll remind you again, Commander. I am here.”

Trip doesn’t say anything, and Phlox turns to tend to one of his creatures. A tiny, squalling, helpless thing. Something in the noise makes Trip flinch. “Doc,” he says.

“Yes?”

Trip wants to talk, he really does. He is curious and repelled in equal measure, fascinated by those strange workings of his body and repulsed by them at the same time. He wants to laugh about it. He wants to be able to get to that point.

Still, those words don’t come. Instead:

“You got anything for a headache?”

-

Decon never used to bother him. You get in there, you strip down to your skivvies, you rub that goo all over yourself, and then you’re done. Hell, you might even have time to crack a joke or two. That’s on a normal day. Right now, Trip has been awake for forty-four hours, and has spent the last twenty-nine of those stranded on a marshy, putrid-smelling little moon being eaten alive by bugs. He’s been in better moods, that’s for sure.

He scratches at a weeping, angry welt on his side, and then he feels his stomach twist when Phlox’s sensors pick up something. It wouldn’t be so bad if he was on his own, but Malcolm is there with him. Any other day, and he might have just been able to handle it. He scratches at his side again, harder this time.

“Mr. Tucker,” Phlox says from beyond the hatch. “Do you have somewhere better to be?”

Trip shakes his head, and ignores the way Malcolm is looking at him. “Come on then,” he says to no one in particular. “Let’s get this over with.”

Then the lights are down, the hatch is closed, and they’re alone. Malcolm is already stripping, stepping out of his jumpsuit and then tugging off his undershirt. Trip watches him for a minute longer than he should. He can’t just stand here waiting for Phlox to scold him again though, so he gets started. He goes through the motions. Shoes, socks, jumpsuit – and then his undershirt. He grits his teeth, and then pulls it over his head. Malcolm passes him the jar of gel, and then Trips gets to work. He smears it down his arms, his chest, and then twists to try and get some on his back. “Here,” Malcolm says. “Let me.”

He reaches for Trip, and his hand grazes the skin just below his ribs. On his left side. Trip flinches and jerks away, sending the jar of gel clattering to the floor. “Don’t,” he says – and it comes out so much harsher than he could ever have meant it to. He had lunch with Malcolm yesterday, in a hidden corner of Engineering, and now-

Malcolm’s eyes widen for a moment, his hand hovering uselessly in mid-air. Then he rights himself, a seamless transition from confusion to business as usual. “Are you hurt?” Malcolm says – and it’s Lieutenant Reed now, not Malcolm who stole the last piece of apple pie from Trip’s plate only a few hours ago.

 _I think it goes a little deeper than that,_ Trip wants to say. He opens his mouth to speak, but then Phlox beats him to it, his voice jarringly loud and tinny over the intercom.

“Gentleman,” he says. “Are you quite alright in there?”

“We’re fine,” Trip says. He’s speaking a little too loudly, and his heart is racing – which Phlox’s monitors will no doubt pick up on. Still, he carries on. “We’re almost done in here now, so-”

“A little longer, Commander. A little longer.”

So he and Malcolm have to stand there, looking anywhere else but each other, for the next ten minutes. He wishes that he could just tell Malcolm, but the thought of Phlox overhearing _that_ conversation is too much. Especially after months of Trip insisting that he was fine, really. When they’re given the all-clear to get dressed and make their way to back to their quarters, Trip is damn well near crawling out of his skin.

“Trip,” Malcolm says, trying again. “Did I-”

“If you’re my friend,” Trip says, and it sounds pitiful even to himself. “You’ll leave it. You’ll just leave it alone.” He pulls on the rest of his clothes and leaves without a word, pulse hammering in his ears. Malcolm, with no desire to flog a dead horse or make a scene, lets him go.

-

Malcolm finds him in the mess a day or so later, and sits down next to him without saying a word. He’s stiff as a board, holding himself impossibly straight. His hand flexes on the table, and Trip, without thinking, splays his own out next to it. His pinky finger brushes against Malcolm’s thumb, and Trip lets out a long, slow breath. Malcolm doesn’t look up from his tea. He also doesn’t move his hand – and in that moment, Trip knows. He knows that he has been seen, and understood.

What a risky, risky business this is.

-

Onwards then. They find themselves on Dakala, and everything about the place sets Trip’s teeth on edge, but he doesn’t let it show. He pitches a tent with Malcolm, and while everyone else throws barbed comments at each other over the crackle of the fire, he turns in for the night. Malcolm is already lying under the covers Wordlessly, he lifts the edge of the blanket. An invitation. Trip’s heart skitters.

Malcolm takes Trips silence for refusal, and he goes to pull the blanket close to himself again. “No,” Trip says. “Let me just-” and he kicks off his boots.

It takes some arranging, and their knees knock together, but they make it work. The blanket is a little small for two, so they lay ramrod straight with barely an inch of space between them. It’s thrilling in its ordinariness, its closeness. How many friends has Trip been camping with? How many times has he shared a blanket with a rock digging into his thigh? How many times-

No. These are new times, untested and uncharted and ever unfurling. There has never been a moment like this – the warmth of Malcolm’s body at the distance of a hair’s breadth, the closeness that should feel awkward but feels as easy as breathing. This is new.

“Can I ask you something?” Malcolm says, clearly not quite as overcome as Trip.

“Sure,” Trip says, and he lays his head on the makeshift pillow.

“The other week. In Decon-” Trip tenses, and Malcolm sighs. “I knew it. I upset you.”

Trip laughs, and Malcolm must think he’s gone mad now. “It’s not-” and that’s no way of putting it, really. Time to start again. “It wasn’t anything that you did. More how...I felt.”

Malcolm sighs, and whether he means to or not, he shifts closer. “You’re going to have to explain it a little better than that.”

Trip wishes that they could skip back a few seconds, to where their shared body heat felt exhilarating rather than oppressive. Still, he stays. “I would ask you if you remembered, but I doubt that you’ve forgotten. The Xyrilians-”

“Ah,” Malcolm says. “I didn’t think that that was it.”

“Oh?”

“I thought I’d overstepped a boundary. That I was being too familiar.”

“Close, but no cigar,” Trip says. “It’s just that, well. Not many people have seen me without my clothes on since-” and here he stalls. It’s impossible to sum up the absurd horror of those days in words. He doesn’t try to now. “Once Phlox had me all sewn up and ready to get back to work, I didn’t really like to look at myself. I still don’t. So for you to see me like that in Decon-”

“I didn’t even _think_ about it, you can’t even tell that-”

“Well, I can. I think about it a lot. So that’s why I jumped a foot in the air as soon as you touched me.” He sighs. “I don’t mean to snap. You know how you laid it all out on the table, back in the shuttlepod? And I told you that none of it mattered, but to you it did?”

“It’s your turn now,” Malcolm says, tying up Trip’s sentence before he can even get there.

“Yeah,” Trip says. “Something like that. Though I didn’t exactly plan on telling you all of this.” They fall into silence then, still pressed close together under the warm weight of the blanket. Outside, Trip can hear the rustling of leaves.

"Did it hurt?" Malcolm asks all of a sudden. The way he says it suggests that it’s something he’s been thinking about for weeks.

"What?" Trip says.

"Did it hurt. When they-" Here, he pauses. "When you were-"

Trip holds a hand up. "It's alright, " he says. "I think we both know what you're getting at." Trip still can't quite bring himself to say the word sometimes. He bristles when Jon mentions it like it was nothing more than a passing amusement. Sometimes he wants to scream when Phlox talks about it with wonder in his voice.

Malcolm nods, and waits for an answer.

Trip thinks back to it – the unrelenting pressure just below his ribs, how he would wake up in the small hours and go to roll over onto his left before he remembered. The dread that grew stronger with every passing day, the panic that he’d have to see the whole thing through. How he'd press his hand to the strangeness of it when he was alone, how-

"Yeah," he says, because that's easier than trying to explain. "It did."

“You never told me,” Malcolm says quietly. “You could have told me.”

When Trip had come around from the surgery, he’d woken to find Malcolm sitting by his bed. They didn’t know each other very well then, not properly. Trip had expected Phlox’s keen gaze, but was met with Malcolm’s instead.

“Everyone seemed to think it was pretty funny,” Trip says. “I didn’t want you to look at me that way.”

“I couldn’t,” says Malcolm. “Not then. Not now.”

Trip, emboldened now, goes on. “I think about her sometimes,” he says.

“Her?”

“The baby – God, can I even call it a baby? The Xyrilian. Ah’len told me that it was a girl, before they-” Trip sighs. “I don’t know, really. I wasn’t attached to her, I wanted her _out_ of me as quickly as possible – but now she’s gone, and I can’t help but, you know.”

“Wonder,” Malcolm says.

“Yeah,” Trip says. “I’ve been doing a hell of a lot of that.” He turns so that he is laying on his back, and for a moment Malcolm’s hand hovers in mid-air. Trip wants to pull it down flat against his torso, just below the speeding thud of his heart. He really is in deep. Terribly, terribly so. The silence stretches on for a few minutes. It’s heavy, but not uncomfortable. It’s the kind of silence the comes just before a storm, when the heavy air makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. It’s a potent silence, a silence that could carry a crackling charge. Trip watches the rise and fall of Malcolm’s chest, a steady motion beneath the blanket. “I feel,” he begins – and this is one way to ruin the mood, but he hasn’t talked about this. Not to Phlox, who’s more than qualified to listen, or Jon, who has been a part of his life for so long. He starts again. “I feel like my body isn’t my own anymore,” he says. “I just don’t understand it. I look the same, I know. It’s just-”

“Maybe you should take some leave,” Malcolm says – and the absurdity of Malcolm saying this is incredible.

“There’s an old Earth saying,” Trip says. “It involves a pot and a kettle.”

Malcolm laughs, and the energy in the tent eases for a moment. “It’s different,” he says. “This is you, not me.” He looks at Trip so seriously then. “You matter.”

There are a million things that Trip could say to that, a million ways in which he could argue with it. Instead, he speaks in a little voice, made small and flat with the weight of honesty. “I was scared,” he says. “I was so scared.”

To his credit, Malcolm doesn’t say anything. Instead, he lets Trip tuck his head into the crook of his neck, and waits for his breathing to even out again. “You can talk to me,” Malcolm says. Malcolm, the man who makes Vulcan repression look mild. “I’m not much of a-”

“I’d like that,” Trip says. There is a rustle outside the tent, and he knows that Malcolm is going to have to go soon, that they have squandered their scant window of sleep. He finds that the former bothers him, and the latter doesn’t.

-

“Commander. Is there something I can help you with?”

Trip stands there in Sickbay, feet frozen to the floor. Phlox just looks at him, a pair of tongs in his hand. Something blue wriggles in their grip. “What’s that?” Trip asks.

“Dinner,” Phlox says, and drops the little wriggler into a cage. Judging by the squawking and growling that follows, dinner is very much welcome. Trip thinks wistfully of Chef’s pecan pie. It’s being served up right now, probably – but here he is. “Do you want to sit down?” Phlox asks.

“No,” Trip says. “Wait. Maybe? Yes.” Phlox pulls up a chair, and waits. Trip’s the one to break the silence. “I don’t know if you remember, but a while back you asked me if I wanted to, you know. Talk. I didn’t then, but-”

“You do now?” Phlox says.

“Yeah,” Trip says. “I, uh, spoke to someone not long ago. I felt better for it. Lighter, almost.”

Phlox smiles – really, really smiles. “Well,” he says. “Would you like to begin, Commander?”

Trip opens his mouth, and does just that.

-

Events pick up with a speed that’s near ridiculous. First there’s the minor incident of being boarded by those ugly little aliens on their interstellar treasure hunt, made even more bizarre by the fact Trip has to see them off in his underwear. Then there’s the ghost ship, an honest-to-God ghost ship. Then Jon and Travis manage to get themselves thrown into a prison camp, leaving the rest of the crew with no other option but to get into a big fight with the Tandarans. Then, _then_ , there’s the day he spends getting his mind hijacked by a homesick alien.

“You know,” he says to Malcolm, not long after that last mission highlight, “I’m getting real sick of aliens breaking, entering, and rearranging me from the inside.” His head throbs. Then he turns just a little bit too quickly, and the next moment he’s spewing up his lunch over Malcolm’s desk.

“So am I,” Malcolm says, his hand pressed to the small of Trip’s back.

The next week they’re dealing with a runaway Vulcan ambassador, and Trip is beginning to think he’ll do anything for a quiet life. He feels like he’s living in one of the holoshows he loved when he was a kid, with events snowballing in insanity from one week to the next.

In between episodes of _Trip’s Big Adventure in Space_ there are moments of respite though. There’s evenings in Jon’s quarters reminiscing about the good old days, or downtime with Hoshi and Travis in the gym. There’s slices of pecan pie to temper the exhaustion after a double shift, and moments where he’s free to just look at the stars and remind himself why he’s here. In those snatches of stolen time, Trip can catch his breath.

-

“Commander,” comes a very familiar voice as Trip is heading out of the mess. “A moment, please.”

T’Pol is a hard one to figure out. There’s no doubt that she thinks that they’re all going about everything entirely the wrong way, but she’s always there to defend them to her superiors when they get pulled up on it. She keeps herself to herself mainly, doing whatever it is that Vulcans do to have fun in the privacy of her own quarters. Now, there’s no point skirting around it. She’s beautiful – and Trip has had time to expand on this particular line of thought many times. Add to the mix that that she could break your neck without breaking a sweat, and yeah, there’s much to admire there.

“Sub-Commander,” Trip says, slowing down so that they fall into step with each other. “Is everything alright?”

She goes to speak – and then her nose twitches. She looks pointedly at the container Trip is clutching. “What is that?” she asks.

“Pineapple upside-down cake,” Trip says. “Chef’s special. Want me to head back and grab you a slice?”

“No,” she says. She looks away, staring ahead as they walk. Trip thinks that they’re just about to get their conversation back on track when she says: “Lieutenant Reed is known to be fond of pineapple.”

“Oh God,” says Trip.

“The frequency of which Humans invoke the names of their deities is something that I have noticed these past months. I was merely making an observation.” She raises an eyebrow. “Your pulse is elevated. I believe I may have, to borrow a Human phrase, ‘touched a nerve’. I apologize.” She looks at the cake again. Trip feels like he’s carrying a warhead now. Then, T’Pol doesn’t so much touch that nerve as yank on it. “Is Lieutenant Reed aware of your intentions?”

“Jesus Christ,” Trip says, almost dropping the cake. He looks around, spotting no one but a couple of ensigns milling about in the corridors. “I’m not,” he begins. “Malcolm isn’t-”

“Human mating rituals may be ridiculous, but they are not complex. But I can see that now isn’t the time to talk about this. I intended to ask you-”

“You know, for a Vulcan you sure do love to gossip,” Trip says. He sighs, and briefly considers shutting his mouth. The thought is fleeting. “Do you even wish that you just knew what was going on in someone’s head? That you could-” and T’Pol has raised that eyebrow again, and- “Ah,” he says. “Of course. You would know. Suppose that touch-telepathy comes in real handy sometimes. I bet we seem like little animals to you.”

“Commander,” T’Pol says, and she’s not in a mood to be interrupted now. “There have been extensive scientific papers written since Vulcans made your acquaintance. On how hard it must be for Humans to communicate, to perceive a lover’s feelings. On how you all touch each other so freely, and yet do not know each other.” She pauses. “I find myself admiring your persistence in the face of such adversity. Even if,” and her gazes tracks down from Trip’s face to the cake container, “you struggle to verbalize your desires in a logical way.”

For a moment, Trip is speechless. “What do they do on Vulcan then?” he asks eventually.

If T’Pol had been human, she would have spared him a smile now. “Even if I told you,” she says, “I doubt that you would find the information useful.” They stop by the turbolift. “I presume you are heading to B deck.” She puts her hands behind her back, and straightens. “I did intend to ask for your...expertise on a report. We are monitoring a planet, and there are some areas in which I would appreciate additional clarification.”

“That makes me smarter than a Vulcan then, right?”

T’Pol says nothing, and Trip starts to laugh. What a strange, strange day this is turning out to be. Cracking jokes with T’Pol. The wonders of space travel never cease.

“Until then, Commander Tucker,” she says as Trip steps inside the turbolift. She looks at the cake again, and as the doors shut between them Trip almost thinks that he sees the corners of her mouth turn upwards. Almost.

-

“On a scale of one to ten,” Trip says. “How much does it hurt?”

Malcolm closes his eyes, and hums through tightly pursed lips. Eventually, he answers. “A five, I’d say.” He presses the wad of bandages to his side and grits his teeth. “All in a day’s work,” he says.

“Right,” Trip says. “I’m going to take that as absolute agony then.” He fumbles around in the medkit, cursing the lack of light. “Why did we have to crash in the middle of the night?” he says. Eventually, he finds a torch and flicks it on. “Shit, sorry,” he says when he shines it straight into Malcolm’s face.

Malcolm lets his head fall back against the rock. “Trip,” he says. “Don’t worry about me. Fix the beacon.”

“Superior officer, remember? I’ll worry about what I like. Besides,” he says with a confidence he hopes is convincing, “I’ll have that beacon fixed up in five minutes. You,” he says, “might take just a little bit longer.” He finds the antiseptic then. “Ah! Got it. Come on then,” he says. “Let’s have a look at it.”

Malcolm’s probably near delirious with the pain now, because he lets Trip help him out of his uniform and ease up his undershirt. A great long gash runs from Malcolm’s navel to just underneath his ribs. It’s pretty grim looking, but it doesn’t look too deep. “Any other wounds?” says Trip, ripping open a sachet of antiseptic.

“No,” Malcolm says, quick and sharp, holding his balled-up shirt over his thigh. He jerks his head upwards when Trip wipes the antiseptic over the gash, balling his hands into fists. “You should leave me here,” he says. “You’ll get a better signal if you head over the ridge.”

“Think there’s more chance of me suddenly speaking fluent Klingon,” Trip says. “Besides,” he continues, “I think you’ll miss me.” He finds the painkilling hypo then. “You’re not allergic to these ones, are you?” he asks.

Malcolm shakes his head, and winces as Trip presses the hypo to his neck. Then, he promptly falls asleep. _Sweet dreams,_ Tip says inside his own head, like if he thinks loudly enough his thoughts will mingle with Malcolm’s.

He gets to work on the beacon after that, ignoring the headache that’s building with some pace. It’s slow, painstaking work, a wire by wire job. He thinks of Malcolm, alone in the armory, a mess of machinery in his lap. God, how long ago was that now?

Eventually, he rigs up something that might not _look_ like a long-range comms beacon, but absolutely works like one. He flicks it on, and waits. He looks over his shoulder at Malcolm, still asleep just by the shuttle. Then – a ping!

“Trip,” comes Jon’s voice. “What happened? Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Trip says. “We came down a little too fast, so the shuttle’s fried for now. Think you can beam some of my guys down to fix her up? Malcolm’s hurt, and I-”

“Hey,” Jon says. “It’s alright. We’ve got you. We’ll have to get some people down the old fashioned way, the magnetic field’s interfering with the transporter. But we’ve got you.”

Once Jon hangs up, Trip goes to wake Malcolm. He’s groggy and slow to come around, the painkillers and exhaustion really doing a number on him. Trip ends up sitting up with Malcolm half sprawled across him, Trip cradling his head. “Hey,” he says. “We’ve got a ride back home.” He runs a hand through Malcolm’s hair. “You think you can sit up?”

“No,” Malcolm says, and Trip laughs.

“Come on,” he says. “We’ll get Phlox to patch you up. Jon’s sorted it all out.”

“Of course he has,” Malcolm says. “He’d do anything for you.”

“Um,” Trip begins, entirely unsure what Malcolm means. He opts for diplomacy. “He’d do anything for all of us.”

“You love him,” Malcolm says, flat and dispassionate. “He’s probably picked up on it.”

Maybe Trip _has_ been speaking Klingon. “Are you delirious?” he says to Malcolm. “Did you hit your head back there?”

“What?” Malcolm says. He’s awake now, and he tries to sit up, moving far too quickly. “Oh, fuck,” he says. Malcolm hardly ever swears, and certainly not in the coarse, well-practiced way that Trip does. He grips Trip’s shoulder, and they couldn’t be any closer if they tried. He looks at Trip. Really looks at him. “You love him,” he says, as if he’s going to start teaching a small child rudimentary mechanics. “You told me.”

“Wait, when? What? Why?”

“I asked you! On the shuttlepod, just before we-”

The memory comes to Trip now. The freezing cold of the shuttlepod, Malcolm’s last question before they’d passed out. How Trip had answered without articulating what he meant, and how he’d breathed in the scent of Malcolm’s hair as he guided them down to lay on the floor. “Holy shit,” Trip says. “No, I didn’t mean that-”

“It’s okay,” Malcolm says, face tight with what Trip guesses is pain. “You really don’t have to explain.”

Suddenly, it all takes shape. Malcolm giving him the cold shoulder for days after that party once he’d found out about Jon. Letting Trip into his room in the middle of the night. The looks – so many looks! The same kind of looks Trip’s been throwing at Malcolm when he isn’t looking. The night in the tent, where Malcolm let him cry into the crook of his neck.

“No,” Trip says. “I do.” He, having abandoned his senses a long time ago, takes Malcolm’s face in his hands. “He’s my best friend. Of course I love him. I’m not-” and he sighs as he tries to find the words. “It’s all in the past. I’m not _in_ love with him, Malcolm. I promise-” and he presses their foreheads together instead of using his words. Malcolm’s stone cold, and as Trip moves his hand down to Malcolm’s neck, he can feel the mad jump of his pulse, warp speed-fast. “God,” he says. “You’re not in good shape.” He runs a hand along Malcolm’s leg and feels – oh, fuck. Trip raises his hand, and it’s streaked with bright, ugly red. “Malcolm,” he says, “Were you planning on telling me that you’re probably bleeding out?”

“Trip,” Malcolm says, ignoring Trip’s last point completely. “I think we might be idiots.” Trip pulls back to look at him – and his face is gray. He starts to sway in Trip’s hold, and Trip pulls him close to save him from the indignity of passing out and falling back down onto the grass.

“It’s okay,” he says. “I’ve got you, come on.”

Malcolm grips at his uniform, and buries his face in Trip’s neck. “If I wasn’t about to pass out from blood loss,” he says. “I think I’d be mortified.”

“Oh,” Trip says. “Well just try to stay awake a little longer, and I’ll remind you of everything that we’ve just said back on the ship.” He can feel himself start to shake, fear rising in him.

“Please,” Malcolm says – and he goes lax in Trip’s arms just as _Enterprise’_ s second shuttlepod breaks through the clouds.

It’s all something of a blur after that. Phlox lets him stay in Sickbay, even pulls up a chair for him. “I can’t imagine he’ll be out for too long,” he says to Trip. He fiddles with the cannula in Malcolm’s arm. “Hypovolemic shock isn’t quite as tricky as it used to be.” He moves over to Trip then. “Anyway. While you’re here.”

Malcolm comes to just as Phlox is finishing up his work. He watches wordlessly as Phlox runs the tricorder up and down, humming as he goes. “A clean bill of health,” he announces to the room. “In fact, Mr. Tucker, I’d say that you might not need to come here so often.”

“You ever heard of patient confidentiality, Doc?” Trip says.

“Yes,” Phlox says mildly. He turns his attentions to Malcolm. “Right, Mr. Reed. Do you think you can sit up?” Malcolm sits up, and Phlox shines a light into his eyes with vigor, and doesn’t even do so much as apologize when Malcolm winces. “My verdict, Lieutenant, is that you’ll be as right as rain after a few more hours here. You are simply a chronic adventurer. There’s no cure for that.”

Trip snorts, and Phlox turns to face him. “You’re no better, Commander. In fact, I’d say that-” Malcolm starts to laugh then – really, really laugh. Trip can’t stop looking at him, how beautiful and unburdened he looks when he just lets himself smile.

Seemingly unbothered by Malcolm laughing and Trip making moon eyes at him, Phlox goes on. “The two of you are the very best that Starfleet has to offer. The very, very best. But as soon as both of you are assigned to a mission together, hell itself is unleashed. Two recent incidents come to mind. The time that Commander Tucker became contaminated with a nerve agent when the two of you decided to try and intercede in a fight between Tyrollian street gangs. Or the time when you, Lieutenant Reed, concussed yourself trying to drag Commander Tucker out of a minefield on Zardar.”

“Actually Doctor, I’ll think you’ll find it was more a case of-”

“Three days rest for you,” Phlox says to Malcolm, ignoring Trip’s addendum completely. “Any token protests? Or can I get back to my research?”

“No,” Malcolm and Trip say in unison.

“Good,” Phlox says. “Commander Tucker, the Captain has informed me that Lieutenant Yarrow is taking the alpha shift tomorrow. So,” he continues, “No early start for you.” Phlox, much like God, works in mysterious ways. Trip just nods, and watches as Phlox goes back to whatever he was doing before Trip and Jon dragged Malcolm in here an hour ago.

Malcolm lets his arm dangle off the edge of the bed, and Trip runs his fingers over the hard ridge of the cannula. It feels, well. Breathtakingly intimate. He traces his fingers over the skin of Malcolm’s inner arm, the crease of his elbow.

“Phlox might see,” Malcolm says, but there’s no real anxiety in it.

“I don’t want to let you out of my sight,” Trip blurts out. He’d meant to say something a little less, well, full-on. He thinks of Malcolm’s blood on his hand though, and knows that he couldn’t keep his thoughts in check if he tried. “I want-” and he has to take a breath. Has to wait a second. Waits for the moment he’s been waiting months for already. Christ. “Do you,” he begins again. “Do you remember what you asked me just before you passed out?”

The thread, unspooling, is picked up again. “Yes,” Malcolm says. “I do remember.”

“Right,” Trip says. “So you thought-”

“It wasn’t an unfair assumption.”

Trip thinks of how he’s pined these past few months – and how much worse it must have been for Malcolm. Thinking that Trip was still in love with someone else. Assuming, of course, that Malcolm is on his level here. Fuck. Actually, he’s had enough of assuming.

“Am I about to make a fool of myself?” Trip says, and leans in closer. Phlox could be standing at the end of the bed checking Malcolm’s vitals right now, and Trip wouldn’t be deterred.

“It’s entirely possible,” Malcolm says – but there’s a tiny smile there, a sudden brightness against the pain and exhaustion written so plainly across his face. “Am I?”

“Yeah,” Trip says, and he leans in. They’re close now, unbelievably so, and Trip can’t believe that’s it’s taken this long, and all it took was crashing a shuttle and Malcolm almost bleeding to death to set things in motion. It’s, well. It’s fucking insane. Trip brings a hand up to cradle Malcolm’s jaw, and then, and then-

“ _Captain Archer to Commander Tucker._ ”

Trip groans, and presses his forehead against Malcolm’s. “No,” he says. “You’re kidding me.” The comm bleeps again, and again, without let up. It must be urgent, if Jon needs him right now. Trip looks at Malcolm, the tight set of his jaw, and the absolute openness of his gaze. “Hold that thought,” he says – and he kisses Malcolm’s forehead. Before he can deal with the ramifications of that, he jumps up to to take the call. “Yeah Jon,” he says. “I’m here.”

-

 _[Reed, Malcolm – 4767M6701DK1ENCRYPTED – 0_ _3_ _:47_ _A_ _M]_

_It’s probably a terrible idea._

Trip looks at his PADD once, and blinks. Nope, still there. Still inexplicable. The one thing that’s been getting him through this huge engineering fuck-up is what transpired in Sickbay barely four hours ago. Now? Well.

“Rostov,” he calls out. “Can you live without me for a few minutes?” He hears something that might well be an affirmative, but doesn’t wait to find out. Sitting down in a corner – the very same corner where he and Malcolm have sat together so many times before – he begins to type.

 _[Tucker, Charles – 7484C27056CT1ENCRYPTED – 0_ _3_ _:47_ _A_ _M]_

_You should be asleep. Did Phlox give you that PADD?_

_[Tucker, Charles – 7484C27056CT1ENCRYPTED – 0_ _3_ _:47_ _A_ _M]_

_And it’s not. You know it’s not._

_[Reed, Malcolm – 4767M6701DK1ENCRYPTED – 0_ _3_ _:48_ _A_ _M]_

_First of all, it’s against the rules. If the captain finds out, you’re not the one who’s going to be demoted. Secondly, what happens if it all goes wrong?_

_[Reed, Malcolm – 4767M6701DK1ENCRYPTED – 0_ _3_ _:48_ _A_ _M]_

_What if something happens to one of us? You have to admit that we’ve had some near misses._

_[Reed, Malcolm – 4767M6701DK1ENCRYPTED – 0_ _3_ _:49PM]_

_I don’t know how to do this. You know I don’t._

_[Tucker, Charles – 7484C27056CT1ENCRYPTED – 0_ _3_ _:50_ _A_ _M]_

_I’m good at flying blind. Try it with me._

_[Tucker, Charles – 7484C27056CT1ENCRYPTED – 0_ _3_ _:50_ _A_ _M]_

_We’ve all been breaking the rules since day one. I think we’ve gone beyond that now._

_[Tucker, Charles – 7484C27056CT1ENCRYPTED – 0_ _3_ _:51_ _A_ _M]_

_I’m gonna come by Sickbay in an hour or so._

_[Reed, Malcolm – 4767M6701DK1ENCRYPTED – 0_ _3_ _:51_ _A_ _M]_

_You don’t have to._

Trip ignores that, and does anyway. When he gets there, Phlox is stripping the sheets from the biobed. The very empty biobed.

“If you’re looking for Lieutenant Reed,” Phlox says, “he returned to his quarters around 20 minutes ago.”

“Thanks Doc,” says Trip, and makes his way to B deck. When he gets to Malcolm’s quarters, he presses the buzzer, long and drawn out. Then again, and again, and ag-

“You know,” says Malcolm, standing there in the doorway, “I was trying to sleep.” He looks awful, to put it bluntly.

“Yeah, well, you can sleep when I’ve said what I have to say,” Trip says. Then, “please.”

Malcolm stands firm for a moment – and then, like footprints washed away by a high tide, he relents. Trip shuts the door behind him, sealing them off from the rest of the ship. “I was hoping you wouldn’t make a scene,” Malcolm says. He sits down on the edge of the bed – and despite whatever change of heart’s come over him in the last few hours, he leaves enough room for Trip to sit down beside him.

“So,” Trip begins. “This feels a little different to where we left off.”

“Turns out losing a lot of blood makes you say stupid things.”

“No,” Trip says. He gets up, and starts to pace. “No. You don’t get to use that one. Just be upfront with me, please. For once.” He stills for a moment, bracing a hand against the wall. “Until an hour ago, I thought that you-”

“It’s not going to be easy, Trip.”

Trip throws his hands up in the air. "I want you. You want me. It doesn't have to be hard."

Malcolm frowns, and starts fiddling with the bed sheets. Perfect, neat hospital corners. He looks down, and speaks. "I hate it when you do that."

"What?"

"Put things so plainly. You make it all sound so simple."

"Well, it is."

"Fraternization is-"

"Oh my God. You're quoting the rulebook now? You know full well that Starfleet doesn't expect a single crew to be able to stick to that."

Malcolm looks up at him then. "I know I'm being difficult-"

"Yeah you sure are. God, Malc. I'm so tired, and-"

"Are you giving me an ultimatum?"

Trip freezes. Before he knows it, he’s kneeling on the floor in front of Malcolm, a hand splayed out across his leg. He can feel the thick wad of bandages underneath Malcolm's pants. "Jeez, no. I don't have the self-discipline for those." He’s aware that he must look like the galaxy’s biggest fool, but he’ll take that one on the chin. Gladly, if he can articulate what he means. If he can somehow get Malcolm to understand. “How long,” he asks, “has it been?”

“I beg your pardon?” Malcolm says.

“How long? Wait, I’ll tell you how long it’s been for me. It was your birthday, and I looked at you like I was seeing you for the first time, and I thought _God._ ”

“You’re joking,” Malcolm says.

“Am I laughing?” Trip says. He straightens up, and sits down beside Malcolm again. “I didn’t just come around to the idea when we were dirtside yesterday. I’ve been thinking about it a lot. For months.”

It’s quiet then. Malcolm doesn’t tell Trip to get out, but he doesn’t tell him to carry on either. Eventually, Trip sighs, and goes to get up. This spurs Malcolm into action. “Wait,” he says – and Trip can feel it. The ice thawing a little.

“Ask me to stay,” Trip says. They’re close now. So close.

A deep breath. “It’s been a lot longer than that for me.”

“Ask me to stay,” Trip says. “Then tell me.”

Malcolm tilts his head, and his eyes dart from eyes, to lip, to eyes once more. “Stay,” he says, finally. “Please.”

Trip does. “So,” he says. “You were saying.”

“You said you knew on my birthday. Well, for me it’s been a lot longer.”

“How long?”

“San Francisco,” Malcolm says. “That long.”

It takes a moment. “No,” says Trip. “When-”

“I was waiting around in this awful bar,” Malcolm says. “Someone walked in five minutes late, and I thought, _oh no._ ” He shrugs. “It only got worse after that, sorry to say.”

Trip grins. “And you’ve been sitting here worrying about regulations? When it’s been that long?”

“It’s not easy for me!” Malcolm says. “All of this. It’s not easy.”

“Sure it is,” Trip says, and he takes Malcolm’s face in his hands, tilting his chin up so that it’s going to be the most natural thing in the world to just lean forward and close that gap like he’s been wanting to for months. “It’s the easiest thing in the world. Loving. Being loved. There’s no better feeling.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Malcolm says, but he’s smiling now, those sharp, severe features lit up with something that Trip knows is written all over his face too. “You’re so irritating.”

“Yeah?” Trip says. “What else?”

“You’re impulsive. You cry at old films. You hate waking up early. You miss your mother’s cooking. You worry me sick half the time, and infuriate me the rest of it.” Malcolm takes a breath. “Shall I go on?”

“Oh my God,” Trip says – and kisses him. Malcolm is still at first, but then his hands are roving – the small of Trip’s back, his hair, his jaw. He takes a deep, shaky breath, and Trip coaxes his mouth open just a little more, just so that he can feel the vibration of Malcolm’s answering moan. This is it – and it’s so much better than Trip could have ever imagined. Malcolm kisses like he’s been starving for it, and Trip is more than happy to sate that hunger. He kisses and kisses and kisses, until they’re both gasping for breath, lips sore and hair mussed.

“Now,” Trip says – and even he can hear how wrecked he sounds. “Have I convinced you?”

Malcolm’s takes a long, wavering breath, and closes his eyes. When he opens them – well. If Trip had been standing on _terra firma,_ he would have felt the ground shift. Malcolm reaches for him again, suddenly un-selfconcious in his neediness, and that’s it. Nothing is going to be the same from this point onwards. “Tell me I’m not going to regret this,” he says.

 _I love you_ , Trip thinks. “You’re not going to,” he says. “I promise.”

-

“We do need to have some rules.”

Trip nods. Their trip to Risa is just over a week away now, but it feels like ten years. Just today he called Malcolm to Engineering under totally false pretenses, just to steal him away to a dark corner and-

“ _Trip._ ”

“I’m paying attention!” He taps his fork against the edge of his plate. “Rules, you said. Got it.”

“We have jobs to do,” Malcolm says. “Everyone on this ship is counting on us to get them from one place to another without dying along the way. We can’t keep-”

“Fine,” Trip says. “No more illicit encounters in Engineering.”

“Please don’t sound so disappointed.”

Trip scoffs, but he can feel the back of his neck growing hot at the thought of said encounters. Malcolm, the sharp angles of his race lit up in red, a hand braced on the wall beside Trip’s head as he catches his breath. Yeah, they really do need that trip to Risa – which he makes clear to Malcolm. Again.

“Yes, but there’s no guarantee we’ll both get shore leave.”

“Oh, believe me,” Trip says. “That is one jury that I am very much willing to rig.”

Malcolm rolls his eyes – but underneath the table, he nudges Trip’s calf with his foot. “Don’t,” he says. “No getting yourself into trouble on my account.”

They’ve been pretty discreet about it so far, ill-advised fooling around in Engineering aside. They never stay the night in each other’s quarters, and they haven’t gone any further than frenzied kissing that leaves Trip’s head in a spin for hours afterwards. Trip hasn’t said anything to anyone, not even Jon.

“Been doing that for a while anyway,” he says. “Stupid trying to stop me now.”

Malcolm doesn’t say anything to that, but he doesn’t move his foot away. Trip’s pulse picks up – just a little, but he can feel it all the same. As if he can sense it, Malcolm moves it back. “Rules,” he says.

“Right,” Trip says. “Rules.”

-

Everything is hot and cold all at once, and the ground keeps rushing up to meet him, and Jon is there, and then there’s a shuttle, and then he’s falling down again, and T’Pol hands are gentle, and he can hear Malcolm’s voice, strident and shot through with worry. Everything is hot and cold all at once, and-

-

Trip wakes to the sounds of Sickbay – the hum of the equipment, the snuffles and squawks of Phlox’s assembled critters, the steady bleeping of the monitors. He pieces together what he can remember. The distress call, followed by the ill-fated trip down to the surface. Deciding to trek across the desert, every single inch of his skin burning, Jon’s hands on his face, tilting his chin up to make him drink. The delirium of heat exhaustion, and a cool hand pressed to his forehead as Phlox fussed over him.

He opens his eyes slowly, and even though the lights are down low, it feels as though he’s staring straight into a supernova. He groans, closing them again, and then someone is pressing a hand to his shoulder. It’s a touch that Trip has come to recognize. It’s one he remembers.

“Welcome back,” Malcolm says. Even though his head is pounding Trip opens his eyes again, just to get a good look at him. Malcolm is pale, and is perched awkwardly on the edge of the chair. Trip would lay a lot of money on him having not slept for a day or two. When his eyes meet Malcolm’s though, Malcolm smiles. “You took your time.”

“Malcolm,” he says – and his voice is a ruin. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”

“Please,” Malcolm says. “You look awful, by the way.”

“Well, you can blame the captain for that,” Trip says. He tries to sit up – and then everything hits him at once. He wants to be sick, the room spins around him, and the sheets rub against what he suspects is the worst sunburn he’s gotten since he was a kid. It’s an unwelcome assault on pretty much every one of his senses, and he lets himself fall back against the mattress once more. “ _Fuck,_ ” he says.

“I’ll call Phlox,” Malcolm says, and Trip doesn’t resist. He lets Malcolm guide him back down to rest his head against the pillow, and the dizziness starts to recede. He starts to drift back to sleep to the sound of the doctor’s approaching footsteps, and without thinking, he reaches out for Malcolm’s hand. He feels the lightest press of fingertips against his own as he falls asleep.

He wakes up again what he assumes must be an hour or so later, and the lights are dimmer still. It must be the gamma shift now. Malcolm is still in the chair next to him, asleep. Trip is just about to nudge him awake when Phlox speaks from somewhere to his left.

“I did recommend that Lieutenant Reed head back to his quarters to get some rest, but he’s a remarkably insistent man.” His voice is level, but there’s a curiosity there.

“Yeah,” Trip says. “He’s pretty stubborn.”

“As are you, I’ve come to understand.” He moves closer, and fiddles with the monitor that’s relaying Trip’s vital signs. “You’re much improved, Commander. Would you like to attempt getting up?”

“I’ll try,” Trip says. It’s a struggle – he feels like he’s run the Martian marathon, but he manages to sit upright and swing his legs over so that he’s perched on the edge of the biobed. “Can I go?” he asks.

Phlox hums. “I’d prefer it if you spent the rest of your time off duty-”

“Time off?” Trip says. “Doc, come on, you know that I can’t take any time off.”

“You will take two days of rest. Rest assured, if there’s an emergency with the warp engine or any other warlords need their ships taken care of, we do know where to find you.” He smiles. “Right here.”

A cough. Both Phlox and Trip turn to face Malcolm, awake now. His eyes are keen and sharp, but when he goes to speak he hesitates for a moment. Eventually, he finds the words. “He could always, uh-” and he _flushes,_ maddeningly. “He could always stay with me. Or, you know. I’ll stay with him.”

Trip doesn’t dare meet Malcolm’s eyes. Instead, he tries to look as calmly as possible at Phlox, schooling his face into what he assumes is a picture of patiently obedience. It doesn’t matter that Malcolm’s words are rattling round in his head at warp speed. What does matter is that Phlox agrees, pronto.

The corners of Phlox’s mouth turn up into a face-splitting grin that’s a little too intense in its earnestness. “Oh well,” he says. “That would give me a great deal of peace of mind, Lieutenant. You promise to bring him back here if he deteriorates in any way?”

“Of course he does,” Trip says, itching to get out of here.

“Yes,” says Malcolm at exactly the same time, doing a good job of sounding a little more sincere.

“Forgive me for wanting a little clarification,” Phlox says. “Neither of you have been particularly staunch followers of medical advice these past few months.”

Trip looks at Malcolm. “He does have a point,” Malcolm says.

“Past events notwithstanding,” Trip says, “I’ll be back here if I feel any worse. I just really, really wanna have a shower Doc. And then I’m going to go to bed.”

Phlox hums. “Never did I think that this mission would be quite like this,” he says, and puts the scanner down. “Here’s some ointment for that sunburn of yours. Apply it every four hours _._ ”

Trips takes it gladly, already in raptures just thinking about a long, cool shower. “Got it,” he replies. He gets up, doing a half decent job of suppressing a wince. “Now, has anyone seen my uniform?”

His uniform is nowhere to be found, but Phlox does have some things that just about fit him – even if the arms of the sweatshirt barely cover his wrists, and the trousers leave his ankles bare. Still, it’s better than walking the halls of the ship in his skivvies. That’s an experience he has no intention of repeating, despite what T’Pol might think.

Phlox doesn’t let him go without running a couple more tests, prodding and poking him with a few instruments that Trip is pretty aren’t standard Starfleet issue. Malcolm sits there looking a little pensive, as if the reality of what he has suggested is only just beginning to sink in.

“Right,” Phlox says. “I’ll discharge you into Lieutenant Reed’s care.” For a moment, Trip thinks that’s going to be all, but then Phlox has to carry on. “Please try not to get up to anything too strenuous,” Phlox says to them both. The meaning is clear, and Malcolm makes a pained noise, like someone has doused him in cold water.

“No funny stuff Doc,” Trip says – and then he makes a bolt for freedom.

Malcolm catches up with him after a minute or two. “ _No_ _bloody funny stuff?!_ ” he hisses. “You know he could go straight to the captain with that.” He’s flushed near scarlet now, and Trip loves him so much he can feel every inch of his body sing with it. He must be smiling, because Malcolm bundles him into a turbolift with the air of someone seeing a drunk into a hovercab. “You’re an idiot,” he says. “I’m going to get pulled up by the captain for fraternization after we’ve tried to be careful, and I’ve just offered to look after you, that’s all, and-”

“Shut up,” Trip says, and he’s laughing now, he really can’t help it. “Even if Phlox did totally abandon patient confidentiality, which-” and he reaches for Malcolm’s shoulder, “-he won’t. Jon’s not going to say anything. Believe me.”

Malcolm looks at him. “You’re still delirious,” he says. “Either that or you’ve told the captain-”

“I haven’t told Jon a thing,” Trip says, and he reaches for Malcolm's hand. “Come on, please.” Malcolm acquiesces, and Trip grins so widely his face aches. “Besides, what’s to tell? Nothing. Well, nothing much yet.”

“I’m noting the _yet,_ ” Malcolm says.

A long, immeasurable second. Trip thinks back on everything that’s happened, from the first time he laid eyes on Malcolm, all of the intervening madness, and then now. How it’s been months, but the feeling hasn’t waned. How it feels sure and good. He tries to articulate this, but he stumbles on his words. Malcolm laughs then. He squeezes Trip’s hand, and it feels like lightning, like hitting Warp 5 for the first time, like taking that first gulp of dirtside air after weeks onboard the ship. The doors to the turbolift open then, and Malcolm lets go. “Come on,” he says. “Doctor’s orders.”

It’s a short walk to Trip’s quarters, and the corridors are quiet this time of night. Trip lets his mind wander to exciting places. Malcolm turns to look at him as he opens the door. “What?” he says.

“I’m just thinking,” Trip says, “how we’ve really lucked out by neither of us having a roommate.”

“Maybe no one could put up with me,” Malcolm says – and then the door is open, and Trip half pushes Malcolm forwards.

“I could,” he says to Malcolm, and then he kisses him. The door shuts behind them, sealing them off from the rest of the ship in the dark, still privacy of Trip’s room. He’s got Malcolm up against the wall now, and he presses up against him with enough pressure on his sunburned skin to make him gasp.

They break apart then, and Malcolm looks dazed. “You’re hurt,” he says – his hand slipping between the too-small sweatshirt and Trip’s hipbone. “We can’t-”

“I’m fine,” Trip says, and goes in for another kiss. Malcolm angles his head away, and so Trip goes for the underside of his jaw instead, kissing there until the skin is pink and stubble-raw.

Malcolm rolls his eyes as he pulls away. “I don’t think this in any mission textbook, but really-.”

“Well, I seem to be writing a new one,” Trip says – and pulls him close again. His legs are getting heavy now though, all the adrenaline of the last few minutes leaving him. “Can we go to bed?” he asks. “I mean I want to shower first, but-”

“I’m exhausted,” Malcolm says. He pulls away again, but keeps his palms splayed flat against Trip’s chest. “Go on,” he says. “You first.”

The water is heavenly against his sore, peeling skin, and Trip takes a moment to brace himself against the steel wall of the shower. His body is screaming out for sleep, but his mind is racing. Everything is ridiculous. Trip begins to laugh. He laughs and laughs, letting his forehead tilt forwards to press against the wall.

When he’s done, he finds Malcolm sitting up on his bed. “I’ll take the floor, if you want,” he says. As if somewhere between five minutes ago and shutting the water off, Trip has had a complete change of heart.

“Like hell you will,” Trip says. “Come on. Budge up.”

Despite his bigger quarters, it’s still a small bed, built to sleep one comfortably rather than two. Just like they did in that sleeping bag back back on Dakala, they manage it. Only now, instead of lying on their backs with barely an inch of room between them, they move into a tentative entwinement. It’s so easy, Trip has no idea why they didn’t do it months ago.

“You know-” Malcolm begins.

“I know,” Trip finishes.

Trip could stay like this all night, but there’s only so long he can ignore the throbbing of his sunburn. It’s dull at first, but then it ramps up and up until it’s making him wince. He shifts against the sheets, and groans. Malcolm is upright in a flash. “Right,” he says. “Come on.” Malcolm finds the jar of ointment first, and presses it into Trip’s palm. Trip hesitates for a minute, and then passes it back. “Yeah?” Malcolm says. Trip nods. “Alright,” he says. “I’ve got you. Just sit still.” He pauses for a moment. “You’re going to need to-”

Trip tries to roll up his sleeves – but there’s no give, and he only manages to edge it up a few inches past his wrists. He pulls on the hem of his borrowed sweatshirt, and before he can talk himself out of it, he tugs it over his head. His pulse picks up as soon as he does, and he grits his teeth. _It’s fine,_ he tells himself. _You’ve been talking about it with Phlox. It’s fine._

“Go on,” he says. “Let’s see what Phlox intends to torture me with.” The ointment is cool against his skin, and the first touch of Malcolm’s hands against his forearm bring relief that is so sudden, Trip can’t help but gasp. “No, it’s good actually,” he says as Malcolm’s touch falters. “Trust me. Phlox could make a killing on this stuff.”

Malcolm makes quick work of it – then his hands smooth over Trip’s stomach, and then higher still. He’s not burnt here. Trip’s breath hitches, and Malcolm stills but doesn’t take his hands away. “Alright?” he says, and the earnestness in his voice helps Trip to put those nagging worries to the back of his mind for the night.

“Yeah,” he says. “More than alright.”

Malcolm ducks his head, and his hands pause at that spot that sent Trip reeling in Decon all that time ago. “You’re lovely,” he says. “Sorry, I know it’s not the time. But you are.”

Not long ago, being desired seemed nothing other than incomprehensible. Now, it’s very much a certainty. Malcolm isn’t one to butter you up with talk that isn’t sincere, that’s for sure.

“It’s fine,” he says to Malcolm. “I’d say that your timing is pretty good, actually.” He lets Malcolm smooth the ointment over his face, lets him run a thumb along his bottom lip. He lets him touch cool hands to his neck, and as his skin stops raging with heat a new, but familiar heat builds elsewhere.

“I’ve got to kiss you,” Malcolm says, and his voice is unlike Trip has ever heard it before.

“Jesus,” Trip says. “You can’t just, say stuff like that. I’ll-”

His words are lost at the press of Malcolm’s mouth against his. This time, Malcolm takes the lead, cradling Trip’s jaw in his hands as he kisses him deeply, slowly. Trip never thought that Malcolm would kiss like this, hot and filthy. When Malcolm pulls away, he’s all flushed and glassy-eyed. Trip presses his fingertips into the sparse softness of Malcolm’s thighs, feels the heat of him through his uniform. He feels wild with this – like he’s running a fever. It’s almost unbearable, and he’d drag it out for hours if he could.

“Oh, darlin’,” Trip says. “Look at you.” Malcolm blushes, and closes his eyes. Trip grins. “Well,” he says. “You’ve got a thing for sweet talk, huh?”

“Oh my _God_ ,” Malcolm says, and kisses Trip again.

They stop for long enough for Trip to watch as Malcolm strips down, and Trip takes in the gash running a mean, jagged line along his inner thigh. The skin is pink and new, Phlox’s neat stitches still visible.

“That’ll scar,” Trip says.

“I asked Phlox to leave it,” says Malcolm, looking down. “There’s a pretty good story behind it.”

“That’s a little masochistic,” Trip says – but Malcolm’s heading to the bathroom now, and sleep is tugging at him. He lets his head fall back against the pillow, and listens to the sound of the water running. Malcolm doesn’t have to sneak out of here in a few hour’s time – Phlox’s orders and all that. Trip falls asleep feeling pretty pleased about that. The sunburn? Well, it’s a small price to pay.

-

“Trip,” calls Jon. “Hold up a minute.”

The launch bay is packed with people who managed to nab a golden ticket, their conversations converging into a low thrum of excitement. It reminds trip of a shuttleport back on Earth. A midday trip to Paris, the red-eye to Honolulu. No matter the time, no matter the destination, the thrill stays the same. Trip and Malcolm are one of the lucky few heading to Risa – Jon too. Trip waits for Jon, leaning against the wall. “Ready to go?” he says.

“More than ready,” Jon says. “I’m looking forward to two days and two nights of doing nothing at all.”

“You’re preaching to the choir,” Trip says.

“Where are you staying?”

“Found a nice little place in the old town. We were going to head to some of those bars on the main strip, but that’s probably going to end up in us getting robbed and tied up in a basement somewhere. We’re just gonna take it easy.”

“You and Malcolm,” Jon says. His tone is neutral.

“Don’t,” says Trip, pointing a finger. “Don’t ask me anything else. You know I’ve never been able to lie to you.”

Jon laughs, and pats him on the back. “Fine, fine,” he says. “Just, you know-”

“Be careful, yeah,” Trip says. “Believe me, I’ve already had that conversation with Phlox. Several of them, in fact.”

Jon looks somewhere past his shoulder, and Trip turns around. There, in the far corner of the launch bay, is Malcolm. He’s deep in conversation with one of his officers – Ahmed, Trip thinks. He and Jon do nothing but watch for a minute or two, until Malcolm looks up and at them.

“You know,” Jon says, “I’ll have to have breakfast with him sometime.”

“Please don’t,” Trip says. “The stress will kill him.” Malcolm is walking over to them then, and Trip feels Jon move away. For a second, Trip is at the point of equidistance – dead center between past and future. Then Jon moves away further still, and Malcolm is right there.

“Alright?” Malcolm asks. He fiddles with his bag and looks at Jon. Trip risks touching him on the forearm, disguising it as him brushing lint from Malcolm’s shirt.

“Perfect,” Trip says.

-

Their room is small, but it feels palatial compared to their quarters back on _Enterprise_. All of the furniture seems comically over-sized – the bed takes up a good half of the room, and the bath is big enough for four. Still, Trip isn’t going to complain. He lets himself fall back onto the pillows (so many pillows!) and closes his eyes. He feels the bed dip, and opens his eyes to look at Malcolm. He’s lying on his front, propped up on his elbows. His hair is damp from the midday heat, and Trip wants to lick the salt from the nape of his neck.

“Trip,” Malcolm says – and that’s a serious voice. Trip turns so that his body is angled towards him, and waits. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” Trip says, his previous train of thought coming to an abrupt stop.

“I don’t want to pry, and you don’t have to tell me, but-” and he takes a long, deep breath. “But I’d like to know. About what happened with you and the captain.”

Whatever Trip had been expecting, it certainly wasn’t that. “Ah,” he says. “Well, there isn’t much to tell.” He sighs. “If you’re expecting a big, dramatic breakup…”. Malcolm just carries on looking at him, waiting for him to carry on. “It was after Jon and A.G. got into trouble with that test flight. They were grounded for three months, and I just about wrangled my way out of a court martial. Jon and I got to know each other pretty well while we were bumped from the program, and it went from there.”

“And?”

“And it was never going to work, long term. I was too young, and Jon needed to focus. We had a year, a really good year. Then it just started to fizzle out. Jon finished it.”

Trip can remember it acutely. He was surfing down at Ocean Beach, and he’d caught a wave when he saw Jon sitting there on the shore. He’d known then. He waited a while before he paddled in, and by the time he felt the sand between his toes he was ready for it. They’d gone to get food afterwards, and it was weird. As time went on, it got less and less weird – and then they were a year from launch. By then, their friendship was comfortable and worn-in, like old leather.

“So that’s it, I’m afraid,” he tells Malcolm. “We broke up, we stayed friends. Sorry to disappoint.”

“Thank you,” Malcolm says. “For telling me.”

“Anything for you,” Trip says – sing-song but utterly sincere. “Hey,” he says. “Do you think the Risians know about pizza? Because I am _starving._ ”

-

Turns out that they _do_ have pizza on Risa. It’s not quite as good as the one that was worth a packed shuttle trip to New York back on Earth, but it’s close. Trip gets cheese all over his chin and Malcolm rolls his eyes, and they share a bottle of wine, and it’s good. It’s really good. By the time they make it back to their hotel, it’s dark and the streets are quiet. Trip nudges Malcolm with his elbow, and it’s so easy. Maybe it’s the wine, or the heat, but right now Trip can’t begin to think why any of this was hard.

“You tired?” he asks Malcolm in the elevator.

“No,” Malcolm says – and something in the way he drags the tiny word out makes Trip’s pulse pick up. It’s a shame that there’s a couple of girls in the elevator with them, or Trip would have done his very best to ascertain just what Malcolm meant. Before long they’re back in the room though, and Trip doesn’t even have time to turn on the lights before Malcolm’s kissing him.

They stumble backwards, barely pausing for breath, let alone to break apart. Trip sticks an arm out blindly, checking that they’re not about to break their necks, and finds a door handle. _Bathroom,_ his final functioning brain cell supplies. He pushes against the door and pulls Malcolm close, and it takes a little bit of wrangling, the lights still off, before he has Malcolm up on the countertop, back pressed to the mirror. Here, in the pitch black, their breathing is almost deafening. Trip is pretty sure that he can hear his own heartbeat. Mindless, he seeks out Malcolm’s mouth again.

This is already light years beyond their frantic necking back on _Enterprise._ Trip knows that they’re going to have sex tonight – even if it’s going to be more akin to teenage fumbling than anything else. He palms between Malcolm’s legs, finding him hard and willing. Malcolm gasps, and tightens his thighs around Trip’s waist. “Yeah?” Trip says.

“Yes, yes,” Malcolm says. It’s still dark. Trip can just about make out the sharp angle of Malcolm’s jawline, and he licks the sweat from his neck, like he’d wanted to hours ago. Malcolm groans, and splays his hands across Trip’s back, pulling him forward. “Come on,” he says, and Trip’s fumbling with his zipper, and-

“Sorry,” Trip says. “I just need to turn the lights on.” He reaches for the switch, remembering where it was from earlier, and then Malcolm is right there, bathed in sudden brightness. “Holy shit,” Trip says. “You’re so beautiful.”

Malcolm’s flushed and looks half-mad with want, a totally different man to the primped and pressed officer he first met all of those months ago. “Trip,” he says. “Come on-”

“Yeah,” Trip says, and at last, he unzips Malcolm’s pants, pulling them off and throwing them across the bathroom. Trip has Malcolm right where he wants him, warm and wanting in his hand. He works his cock with little finesse, a real rushed job. Malcolm doesn’t seem to mind though, and lets his head fall back against the mirror. Trip braces his hand against the glass, and Malcolm turns to press his lips to Trip’s wrist. Trip is so hard he thinks he might pass out, desire pooling hot and urgent in his gut. He really gets to work then, coaxing little gasps out of Malcolm with the motion of his hand. He swipes his thumb over the head of his cock, pressing down just a little, and Malcolm grits his teeth and swears.

“I’m not going to,” Malcolm says, and Trip feels his cock jump in his hand, a warning sign. “Wait,” he says. “You too.”

Trip groans, and he has to shut his eyes. “That’s really not going to take long.”

“Good,” Malcolm says. “We’ve waited long enough.” He shifts forward – and the counter is just the right height that it brings them flush, hip to hip.

In the end, there’s nothing graceful or drawn out about it. Trip gets his pants down around his ankles, only half stepping out of them. Then he’s half rubbing up against Malcolm, half still trying to bring him off with his hand. He grinds up against his own fist, and gasps against Malcolm’s mouth. “Oh my, _fuck,_ yes, you’re so-” and Malcolm bites his lip as he kisses him. Then his hand is there alongside Trip’s, and they’re touching each other. It’s absurdly good.

What does it is Malcolm leaning back a little so he can look down between them, naked wonder clear on his face. He gasps, and his hips jerk, and his grip tightens, and Trip can’t really bear it for a moment longer and comes, marking Malcolm’s inner thighs, right over the scar he’d been so keen to cultivate. Malcolm only lasts a few seconds longer, hitching his leg up even higher around Trip as he rides it out. He’s quiet as he comes, but he can’t keep still, arching and grabbing and pleading with every movement of his body.

Trip can feel his shirt sticking to his back, and his legs feel like jelly. He pitches forward, gasping into Malcolm’s shoulder. They stay like that for a long time, until their breathing has slowed and Trip’s back starts to ache. When Trip pulls back, Malcolm frowns. “Shower,” he says, anything more articulate clearly beyond him, and Trip kisses him again, and again, until Malcolm’s pushing him away and laughing.

Later, when they’re laying in the huge bed, Malcolm works his hand up underneath Trip’s t-shirt. “I remember you buying this,” he says. Trip does too. It had been at a terrible gig on Uluosia, and Trip had haggled with a guy with honest to God horns growing out of his head for it, his ears still ringing. Hoshi still won’t tell him what the t-shirt says.

“That was an interesting night,” Trip says. Malcolm hums in response, and moves his hand up higher, palm splayed on Trip’s left side. “You know,” he begins. “I didn’t imagine tonight going quite like it did. I had, you know. Grander plans.”

“Trip,” Malcolm says. “We have plenty of time.”

Trip falls asleep dwelling on that particular thought.

-

A week after they’d met up in that bar, Trip had been out for a run. The San Francisco fog had settled in thick that morning. Trip had found his stride, running down to the Golden Gate, close to the bridge. It had been early, the rising sun barely making any impression through the mist. Trip had stopped for a drink, only to see a familiar figure moving down the opposite side of the street. Malcolm hadn’t seen Trip there, swigging from his water bottle on the other side of the road – but Trip watched him. He watched the steady beat of his feet against the sidewalk, his sharp exhales, his silhouette as he moved through the mist. He watched as Malcolm finally disappeared into the fog, the sounds of the city waking up just filtering in. Trip had sat there for a little while, not wanting to leave the moment, the quiet, behind.

-

Trip wakes up to an empty bed, the cool night breeze coming in through the open door. A sideways look at the clock tells him it’s a little after four in the morning. In an instant, everything that had happened a few hours ago floods his senses, and he has to roll over and press his face into the pillow. It doesn’t seem real – and it’s not until he has to lift his head up to breathe that Trip allows himself to believe that it is.

He finds Malcolm on the balcony, sitting on the wall. In the distance, Trip can make out the sound of the sea, the surging and ebbing of the water against the shore. Malcolm has his eyes closed, and he doesn’t open them until Trip puts a hand on his shoulder. “You know,” he begins. “I never did feel comfortable at sea, despite my father’s best efforts. I’ve been scared of drowning since I was a little boy but-” and here, he stops. He looks to the far distance again. “I like the sound of it. It’s-”

“Calming,” Trip says.

“Yes,” says Malcolm. “That’s it.”

For a while, they sit there in silence, doing nothing but listening. Trip steals a glance at Malcolm – if you can call it stealing now – and takes him in. His hair is catching in the breeze, and he looks more peaceful than Trip has ever seen him. No worry, no uncertainty. If anything is going to happen to them, this is how Trip is going to remember him. He files this Malcolm away, in the part of his brain reserved for the most sacred of things – the first engine he ever fixed, the smell of freshly cut grass in his parent’s garden, Lizzie’s laughter, the blue hue of San Francisco twilight.

“Come on,” he says to Malcolm, holding out a hand. A familiar action now. “The night’s still young.”

They leave the door open, ready for the first rays of dawn light to come seeping in. When he kisses Malcolm this time, it’s with none of the urgency of earlier. They find their way back to the bed, and Trip lets himself be pushed back into the soft mound of pillows and sheets. He spreads his legs, and Malcolm fits between them like a dream. “Could we-” he asks, and Malcolm nods, already in tune.

“Do you have-”

“Yeah, yeah. In my bag, just over there. I got my jabs from Phlox before we left. A proper check-up too. I’m clean,” Trip says. They probably should have had this conversation earlier, before they made a mess of the bathroom – but Trip’s talking now.

Malcolm blushes, even after everything that’s happened. “Me too,” he said. “I saw him before we left as well. I got the works.”

“Yeah?” Trip says. “So you don’t mind…”

“I really, really don’t,” Malcolm says – and then there’s a minute or two before Trip’s brain catches up with his body, because Malcolm is there, again, but now he’s holding a bottle of lube. “Like this?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Trip says. “I wanna see you.” He kicks off his boxers, keeps the t-shirt on.

Trip has had many lurid fantasies about this – but nothing compares to the sight of Malcolm slicking his fingers, and- _oh._ Malcolm closes his eyes and lets out an unsteady breath, like he’s just as affected as Trip. Then he opens him up slowly, carefully. As methodical in this as he is everything else.

Trip loves this part, loves the stretch, the ache, the slow, simmering heat building beneath his skin. He could get off like this, he reckons, with nothing other than Malcolm’s fingers inside him. He moans at the thought, and lets his head fall back against the pillow. Malcolm’s persistent, not deeming Trip ready until he’s crooking his fingers up against the spot that makes him whine. He does it again, and again, until Trip’s begging for it. “Come on,” he says, breathless. “I want you. I’ve wanted you for so long.”

“I know,” Malcolm says, reaching for more lube. “I know, I know.” Then he’s lining himself up, concentration drawing his eyebrows up and together. Trip shifts so that he’s leaning up on his elbows. He’s gasping for air, like he’s drowning, and then Malcolm’s pressed up against him, into him, and _fuck_ , it’s-

“Malcolm,” he says, breath punctuating the gap between syllables. “You’re amazing. This is amazing. Don’t stop.”

“I’ve barely gotten started,” Malcolm says – and he’s pressing his lips together like he always does when he’s really working at something. He thrusts a few times, just about getting a rhythm going, and then he stops abruptly. “Wait,” Malcolm says, and he closes his eyes. “Don’t move,” he says. “Or you’re going to be very disappointed.”

That breaks the tension gripping Trip’s body, the desperate need ebbing into something more gentle. “Torpedoes ready to launch, huh?” he says.

Malcolm peels one eye open. “I’m regretting taking you to bed already.” His grip on Trip’s hips is firm, and he rubs his thumbs in small circles. Round, and round, like he’s trying to make his mark.

Trip grins. “No you’re not,” he says, and hauls Malcolm down for a kiss.

After that, it’s easy. Malcolm’s good at this, really fucking good. He hitches Trip’s leg up so he can hook his arm underneath it, moving into him relentlessly. A sure, steady motion, one that has that fire kindling in the pit of Trip’s belly. Every so often Malcolm strikes that spot deep inside him, and Trip can’t keep quiet when he does. He groans, gripping at anything – the sheets, his t-shirt, Malcolm’s hair, thin air. Malcolm leans in close, his mouth within touching difference of Trip’s. They move, and they breathe in each other’s air, the hurried _whoosh_ of their breath back and forth somehow more intimate than a kiss.

"We can't do this back on the ship," Malcolm says – and he’s breathless now, his voice pitched low.

"What?" Trip says, too full and delirious to make sense of a single thing that isn't where Malcolm is pressing forwards, driving up into him. His brain works to catch up. "Wait, why?" Then Malcolm moves again, and he cries out, his head lolling from side to side.

"We can't," Malcolm says. "You're so loud. You'll wake three decks if you're going to be like this every time.”

Trip laughs, and then whines into the juncture of Malcolm's neck and shoulder. “Let them ask,” he says. “I’ll tell them you’re the best damn fuck in the Alpha Quadrant.”

“High praise indeed,” Malcolm says – but Trip notes the way his flush deepens even more, the rocking of his hips growing more urgent. “Trip,” he says. “Can I, is it alright to-”

Trip has thought about this too, when he’s been alone at night, his fingers almost but not quite doing the trick. “Yeah,” he says. “God, please. Inside me, yeah, come on, just-”

“ _Fuck,_ ” Malcolm says – and then slams into Trip, gasping and gritting his teeth. “I’ve imagined this so many times. You too, doing this to me, oh-”

“Next time,” Trip says, his hand slipping on the sweat-slick pane of Malcolm’s shoulder. “Yeah, I’ll take such good care of you, I’ll-”

That, Trip’s promise, is what does it for Malcolm. He groans, and his thrusts turn erratic, less measured but all the more urgent. He gasps until it’s through him, until he can’t do anything other than slump forwards against Trip’s chest. He pushes his hands up under the t-shirt, like he always does now. “Trip,” he begins. “I-”

“I know,” Trip says. He can’t stop shaking, stuck halfway between really, really wanting to get off and to drag this moment out forever. Malcolm pulls out of him, and he’s going soft now so it’s easy – but Trip whines at the loss all the same. “I want-” he says, not sure how to end the sentence.

“I know,” Malcolm says, mirroring. He tugs at Trip’s t-shirt. “On or off?” he asks. Both words carry equal weight, neither skewed by expectation. It’s up to Trip.

“On,” Trip says. Malcolm doesn’t pursue it, doesn’t try to persuade him otherwise. He just shifts, and moves down. Trip knows what’s coming when Malcolm presses his mouth to the skin below his belly button. He can’t look, can’t bear to look away, can’t move, can’t stay still. “You’re a wonder,” he says – and then Malcolm takes him in his mouth.

Even if he hadn’t just been fucked to high heaven, Trip wouldn’t have lasted long. Malcolm’s mouth is hot, and wet, and his fingers are pressing up into him again, except this time the way is easier, slick and made pliant. The heat builds low in him for the second time tonight, an insistent, tugging pleasure. Malcolm works him with his fingers and his mouth, and there’s a moment where’s he’s just on the edge, teetering on the precipice, where the pleasure is so sharp and dizzying it’s almost painful. He can feel it everywhere – his belly, his thighs, even his toes as they curl. “Malcolm,” he gasps out. “Oh my _God,_ I’m gonna, I’m-”

It’s like zero-g, total freefall. Trip is powerless to do anything other than move with it, his hand on Malcolm’s shoulder. His hips jerk, and he arches his back, the air forced out of his lungs in a series of short, ragged gasps. Malcolm doesn’t let up until Trip is pushing him away, his eyes pricking with tears. He’s never been able to help that, and he blinks them away before they can fall. His heart races, then slows. Everything comes back into focus, a slow shift back to normal. Except it’s happened now, _really_ happened. It’s done, and both of them are changed for it.

“We,” says Trip, “are doing that again. Soon.”

Malcolm rests his head on Trip’s thigh, turning his face inwards so that Trip can feel every breath against his skin. Trip feels the upwards curve of his mouth, an unspoken agreement.

The sun is coming up now.

-

The shuttle ride is uneventful. _Enterprise_ is right there in orbit, so they barely have time to get comfortable before the great, gleaming hull of the ship comes into view, swallowing the surrounding stars. Jon looks from Trip to Malcolm, and back again. “I'm guessing you two had an interesting couple of days,” he says. “See any of the sights?”

Malcolm looks at Trip, very much willing to let him take this one. Trip thinks of him with his eyes screwed shut, face turned into the sheets as Trip made good on that promise of his. They had barely set foot out of the room since yesterday morning. Trip had wandered down to the beach this morning, grabbing breakfast for them both on his way back. It had been so breathtakingly normal. Neither of them were cut out for that kind of life, but it was nice to play at it.

Malcolm coughs, and Trip grins. “Fascinating culture, sir.” Jon looks at him like he certainly doesn’t believe him, which, fair enough. Trip wouldn’t if it had been the other way round. He turns to Hoshi. “What about you, Hoshi? Do anything constructive?”

By the time the shuttlepod docks, Trip is just about ready to get back to work. He’s on gamma shift later, with just enough time beforehand to get some sleep and some of whatever Chef’s cooking up for dinner. Malcolm looks at him, and Trip takes him in again. The jut of his collarbone, which Trip had pressed several gasping kisses to mere hours ago. Trip catalogs it all, from temple to toe. It’s going to be a while until they have so much time to themselves again.

-

“Sorry, sorry,” Trip says, holding two mugs in one hand, and his PADD in the other. “I know I’m late. Here,” he says, placing the mugs down on Phlox’s desk. “You tried this stuff? Tarkalean tea. It’s great.”

Phlox takes the mug and sniffs it. “Hmm,” he says, and takes a sip. “Very good,” he says. He looks up at Trip. “Well, Commander,” he says. “Shall we begin?”

It’s been getting easier to talk to Phlox, as the weeks have gone by. Sometimes it feels as if they don’t really cover anything at all, exchanging mindless gossip or feeding Phlox’s critters. Other times, Trip can hardly keep it together. Just after their most recent run-in with the Suliban, Trip had been so wrung out he could barely speak. _It’s not linear,_ Phlox had told him – and Trip knows that now. He understands.

Today, Trip tells Phlox about T’Pol’s story about her grandma. She’d told him and Jon yesterday, and Trip has spent all night wondering whether she was spinning them a long old yarn or not. “Do you think it’s true?” he asks, taking a gulp of his tea.

“Does it matter?” Phlox says. “You were entertained. Surely everything else is secondary.”

“Well, when you put it like that,” Trip says. “Still. It drives me crazy not knowing.” He frowns. “Don’t go telling anyone though, just in case.”

Phlox laughs. “The Sub-Commander’s secrets are safe with me.” He sits back, hands clasped on his stomach. “Now,” he says. “Is there anything else? You did mention a-”

“A secret,” Trip says.

“Yes. How it was wearing on you having to keep it.”

Trip stares intently at his tea. “Yeah,” he says. “It’s getting a little easier. I think. I’m happy! Don’t get me wrong. It’s just, when I’m happy, I want to shout about it from the rooftops. I’m not used to having to keep quiet about it.”

“I see,” Phlox says. “And how does Lieutenant Reed feel?”

Trip just stares for a second, and a second after that. “What?” he asks, eventually.

Phlox laughs again. “I may be an alien living among Humans, but I’ve spent enough time around them to, say, pick up on certain clues.” He finishes his tea. “Am I correct?”

“Please don’t tell anyone,” Trip says.

“Patient confidentiality, Commander!” Phlox says, which doesn’t fill Trip with too much confidence. “Well, unless you manage to drag Mr. Reed in here too-”

“I think you’d have to put him under general anesthetic first,” Trip says. Phlox carries on staring at him, waiting for him to continue. “No. It’s not an issue. Not really. Everything in time. I think Malcolm’s just a little more private than I am. That’s all.”

“Well,” Phlox says. “It seems like you’ve got it all figured out. How are you feeling regarding intimacy?”

Trip chokes on his tea. “Jesus,” he says. “You really don’t beat around the bush, do you?” Phlox grins, and waits. “It’s fine. It’s good. Malcolm, you know, he gets it.” It’s true. He does. Sometimes, the thought of getting undressed makes Trip’s heart race, and sometimes it’s fine. It’s like rolling a dice. “We talked about it. A long time ago.” Wrapped up in their blankets in a too-small tent, the wind whistling outside.

“Perhaps you don’t need me anymore,” Phlox says.

Trip looks at Phlox, and around at this space with which he’s become very well acquainted. “I do,” he says. “You’ve been more help than you know, Doc.”

Phlox beams.

-

Trip wakes slowly, sleep still trying to pull him back under. He groans and rolls over, patting the warm, empty patch of bed next to him. “Ugh,” he says. “What time is it?”

“A little after seven,” Malcolm says. Trip rolls onto his back to watch him pick his clothes up off the floor. “Thought I’d get an early start.”

“You on beta shift?”

“Yes.”

Trip groans, again. “We’re not due on the bridge until 12:00,” he says. “You’re a madman.” He reaches for Malcolm, more of an ungainly grapple than anything else. “Come on,” he says. “Come back to bed for a while.” He gets a fistful of his shirt, and tugs.

Malcolm rolls his eyes, but goes willingly. “You know, if you don’t want anyone to see me coming out of your quarters, you’re making that a lot more difficult.”

“I don’t care,” Trip says. “Run down the hallways naked. Just sleep with me for a little while longer.”

He goes back under so easily, sleep rising up to meet him like a cresting wave. He dreams – of home, the feel of smooth pebbles at the bottom of a creek under his bare feet. He dreams of a field bathed in low, early morning sunlight, the lingering chill of night still in the air. He dreams, and dreams, an endless loop of fleeting images that feel as though they stretch on for hours. When he wakes again, his face is pressed against Malcolm’s shoulder, an arm slung over him. Malcolm’s flicking through tabs on his PADD. Trip shifts, and Malcolm speaks. “It’s half past ten,” he says.

“Alright, alright,” Trip says. He rolls over and stretches, and heads for the shower. When he comes back, feeling a little less out of it, Malcolm is pulling on his uniform. “I showered while you slept,” he says. He reaches down to lace up his boots. “I’ll skip breakfast.”

“No,” Trip says. “Gimme five, and we’ll go down to the mess.”

Malcolm looks at him for a long moment. “Together?” he says.

Trip shrugs, letting the ball fall firmly in Malcolm’s court. “If you like.”

Turns out Malcolm doesn’t mind that, as long as the hallways are clear. With a little way to go before the shift changeover, they walk together in the quiet. Malcolm clears his throat just before they reach the mess. “Are you busy tonight?” he asks.

“No,” Trip says. “Travis wanted to work out, maybe watch a movie or something. It’s nothing important though. I can tell him we’ll do it another time.”

“No,” Malcolm says, a little too quickly. “It’s fine.” The doors to the mess open, and Trip is hit with the smell of freshly cooked bacon.

“You’re being weird,” Trip says, once they’ve got their food. “Out with it.”

“It’s really nothing.” Malcolm spreads peanut butter over a pancake, which Trip has learned to not even bother questioning.

“Malcolm…”

Malcolm sighs. “Fine. I was going to ask you something, that’s all. You see-” and he stops. “My sister. She’s calling me tonight, and I just wondered if you’d like to make an appearance. You can say no,” he says. “Please.”

“Please say no?” Trip can’t help but smile now, nudging Malcolm’s knee with his foot. Lizzie hadn’t stopped nagging at him until he made Malcolm sit down and speak to her for an hour. He’s not quite sure that Malcolm’s recovered yet.

“You know what I mean,” Malcolm says. He spears a piece of pancake with his fork. “I’d take Travis’s offer, myself.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not you,” Trip says. “I’d love to.”

“Really?”

“Yes! Why wouldn’t I?”

Malcolm hums, looking down at his PADD now, breakfast already forgotten. Trip nudges him. “Oh, right,” he says, and cuts himself another piece. “Well, the call’s scheduled for ten o’clock, if you do want to drop in.” He says it like it doesn’t matter to him if Trip does come or not – but Trip can see through that now. After all this time, he can see that this matters.

“I’ll be there,” he says. “I promise. On my very best behavior too.”

Malcolm raises his eyebrows. “I find that _very_ hard to believe.”

People start to file in now, looking for something quick to eat. Travis is talking to T’Pol by the replicator, brandishing a cup of coffee. Trip would lay money on him having woken up about ten minutes ago.

“You know,” Malcolm says. “The captain wants to have breakfast with me next week.” He looks at Trip now. “Alone.”

Trip lets out a low whistle. “Oh boy,” he says. “You’re in for it now.” The color starts to drain from Malcolm’s face, and Trip starts to laugh. “Oh my God,” he says. “Please, relax.”

“Impossible since I met you, I’m afraid,” Malcolm says. He smiles though, and reaches for his cup of tea. Draining it in one gulp, even thought it must be scalding hot, he makes to move. “Well,” he says. “Back to work.”

“No rest for the wicked,” Trip says. “Ten o’clock then.”

“Yes,” Malcolm says.

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Trip says.

Trip reaches out to stop Malcolm before he goes. His fingers brush against Malcolm’s wrist, skirting along the cuff of his uniform. Everyone’s preoccupied with their food, so Malcolm allows it. He closes his eyes for a moment, and then, he mirrors Trip’s touch. Trip can feel the hum of the engines in the soles of his feet, and Malcolm’s pulse at the tips of his fingers. The two separate rhythms converge, a perfect pattern. The moment stretches on, and on, and the ship moves through the stars.

**Author's Note:**

> some notes xoxox:
> 
> 1\. lizzie tucker starts a new job in london three weeks before the xindi attack. she tracks down madeline reed and they become great friends. this gives malcolm periodic stress headaches.
> 
> 2\. they’re travelling on a spaceship that’s going faster than the speed of light but they can only take calls in jon’s ready room or at hoshi’s work station? ok. well they’ve all got zoom on their PADDs now.
> 
> 3\. please don’t ask me what happens when hayes turns up in season 3. ill-advised threesome that everyone’s too embarrassed to ever mention again? extremely fraught group therapy with phlox? let’s not go there.
> 
> 4\. did you spot the ds9/dax reference? it’s a very tenuous one, but i couldn’t resist. 
> 
> 5\. i am as english as malcolm reed, so sorry if trip says anything weird. why didn’t i just write the fic from malcolm’s p.o.v., you ask? well i asked myself that too babes! numerous times!
> 
> 6\. please be nice! i love you all and i can be found on tumblr @mantelpieces :)


End file.
